THE WICKED 
JOHN GOODE 





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THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 



HORACE WINTHROP SCANDLIN 




JOHN GOODE 



THE WICKED 
JOHN GOODE 

BY 

HORACE WINTHROP SCANDLIN 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

THOMAS MOTT OSBORNE 

AND AN EPILOGUE BY 

REV. J. G. HALLIMOND 

SUPERINTENDENT OF THE BOWERY MISSION 



NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






S3 



COPYRIGHT, 1917, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



1 
COPYRIGHT, 1916, 1917, BY THE CHRISTIAN HERALD 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

APR -3 1917 



Ct A 4601 3 9 



INTRODUCTION 

Recalling my early reading of iEsop's 
Fables, I always enjoyed the Moral at the 
end of each story; for then I felt quite 
sure I had understood; and I liked to be 
quite certain of that. 

In that most delightful of nursery clas- 
sics, "Alice in Wonderland," one of the 
characters gravely remarks: "Every- 
thing's got a moral if only you can find it." 
I confess to an increasing desire, as the 
years advance, to find the moral of things. 

In the story of John Goode one can 
find several good morals, but the one that 
appeals most to me might be worded thus : 
Take care of the boy and the man will 
take care of himself. 

Do what we will, there will always be 



vi INTRODUCTION 

need of correctional institutions to care 
for those who, for some reason or other, 
cannot or will not play the game of life 
according to the rules laid down by the 
community — "Society Misfits." Whether 
it is their fault, or the fault of their ances- 
tors, or of the environment, matters little 
to the public which suffers from their de- 
structive activity. When the law lays its 
hands upon these mischief-makers it sends 
them to some institution; and when they 
make trouble there we call them "incor- 
rigibles," thus assuming that it must be 
the fault of the inmates rather than of 
the institution. 

• •••••• 

John Goode, at the age of ten, was an 
"incorrigible"; so he tells us. But was 
he? Suppose he had found, in one of the 
institutions to which he was sent, an in- 
telligent system which would have stimu- 
lated his sense of honour and his capacity 



INTRODUCTION vii 

to bear responsibility, as well as a super- 
intendent who was a sympathetic teacher; 
can one doubt that the inherent strength 
and goodness of the man, which at last has 
seized upon him and now dominates him, 
would have emerged then? Are we to 
suppose that the sacred fire cannot be 
kindled in these men until the soul has 
been smirched? Perhaps if I had not seen 
young boys as incorrigible as John Goode 
ever was at the age of ten, turned by 
humane and sensible treatment into good 
and useful citizens, I should think other- 
wise ; but having beheld with my own eyes 
the gradual but complete reformation of 
many such youthful delinquents, long be- 
fore I saw the same thing among the adult 
prisoners of Auburn and Sing Sing, I 
know that there was no reason for John 
Goode's early failure to reform, except 
the stupid maladministration of the insti- 
tutions which received him bad and made 



viiS INTRODUCTION 

him worse. It is only another case where 
"Man's inhumanity to man makes count- 
less thousands mourn." 

In the course of time John Goode re- 
formed. But the reform of an individual 
criminal here and there is no new thing. 
It may happen, and has happened, in any 
one of several ways — among them the way 
it happened to John Goode. But one of 
the important lessons to us is that it did 
not happen through the agency of any 
one of the institutions in which he was 
placed. Every one of them made a fail- 
ure of him. As the event showed, he was 
good material all the while; yet so far as 
society's official agencies of reform were 
concerned he was the worst for all of 
them. And such conditions should be a 
matter of shame to us. Think of the many 
years of life wasted and worse than 
wasted, in which the man's strength might 



INTRODUCTION ix 

have been used for the benefit of society, 
instead of towards its destruction! Also 
think of the thousands whom the light 
never strikes as it struck John Goode. 

The chief moral, therefore, which I find 
in this story deals with the obligation that 
is upon us to reform the reformatory in- 
stitutions to which our little John Goodes 
are sent and which are now little else than 
feeders to our state prisons. Every state 
has juvenile refuges and children's pro- 
tectories and industrial schools and refor- 
matories. I have heard of very few which 
allow the children enough initiative to en- 
able them to prepare themselves thor- 
oughly and efficiently for life. We swing 
from brutality to benevolent paternalism ; 
and while the latter is pleasanter, it is 
almost as harmful. 

In the meantime, let us be grateful that 
we have occasional John Goodes, strong 



x INTRODUCTION 

enough to seek and find God in spite of 
the barriers we ignorantly and stupidly 
place in their way. 

THOMAS MOTT OSBORNE. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



Introduction by Thomas Mott Osborne v 

CHAPTEB 

I My Start 15 

II An Eleven- Year-Old Runaway! 27 

III My First Arrest — Age Eleven 33 

IV In New York and In Trouble 

In One Night 44 

47 
54 



V Doing My First "Bit" . . 

VI In Which I Am Bound Out . 

VII On Board Ship — Bound Out 

VIII In Which I Meet My Aunt . 67 

IX Now A Professional Thief . 71 

X Getting In Right 76 

XI In Which I Marry .... 79 
XII In Which I Begin to Slide Down- 
hill from Which there is but 
One Path Back 85 

XIII My Last Prison Term ... 93 

XIV At the Bottom of the Bottom . 102 
XV Just Before I Turned! . . . 110 

XVI In Which I First Visit The Bow- 
ery Mission 117 



xii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGI 

XVII Hard Manual Labor — A New 

Sensation 127 

XVIII I Join the Brotherhood and 

Meet Dr. Hallimond . . . 138 

XIX Out of Work ...... 143 

XX In Which I Fall ..... 150 

XXI In Which I Suffer As Never 

Before . . . . . . . 162 

XXII In Which Is Hell .... 177 

XXIII Together — At Last .... 186 

Epilogue by Rev. J. G. Hallimond . . 203 



THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 



THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

CHAPTER I 

MY START 

It was cold and sharp with wind and 
the snow crunched crisply underfoot as 
host and guest entered the grounds of a 
modest and comfortable country home. 
The log fire in the cozy living room burned 
cheerfully and cast a soft, mellow light 
halfway into the room as the two men 
dropped into huge leather chairs inviting- 
ly placed before it. They awaited the call 
to dinner. Weary and footsore they were 
after a five mile jaunt from the club where 
they had spent the morning. 

With keen appetites the two men par- 
took of a roast and its fixings in silence. 

15 



16 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

Each seemed absorbed with his own re- 
flections. Reaction after the walk per- 
haps, or was it the season? It was the 
last day of the year. Was it the year they 
were about to leave behind, the years they 
had left behind, or the year they were 
about to enter of which these two men 
were thinking? At any rate, their silence 
remained unbroken. They seemed to un- 
derstand — these two men — the silence 
seemed as satisfying as the meal. 

Coffee and cheese were served at a small 
table in front of the fireplace amid the 
still unbroken silence. And as if to hold 
unbroken their reverie they settled deep 
down in their chairs. 

The guest was massive — a giant of New 
England origin developed into rugged 
manhood by a strenuous early life in the 
far and middle West. Close cropped hair 
— grey — and deep facial lines indicated 
his age as sixty-five, but the huge unbent 



MY START 17 

frame and the steel like muscles of the 
big limbs seemed not more than forty. 
The high and heavy forehead and the 
overhanging brow bespoke intellect. The 
keen, steel blue eyes spelled determina- 
tion. Yet those eyes had a soft, kindly 
look, one that invited confidence. It was 
a look not at all like what one would as- 
sociate with the rest of the portrait. A 
square protruding chin completed the pic- 
ture of a man who could and would in- 
dulge and who had indulged his every 
desire. 

The guest drew from his pocket a pack- 
age of papers and extracted a typewrit- 
ten letter which he read and re-read many 
times. 

"That's an invitation to speak at a 
Men's Club," he said quietly as though 
continuing aloud a mental conversation. 

"I've done a pile of thinking ever since 
it came. Last night Dr. Hallimond asked 



18 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

me to be sure and accept it. Of course 
I'll do anything he asks. 

"As I look back sometimes — like to-day, 
for instance — it seems as though I must be 
dreaming or as though Aladdin had 
crossed my path. Just think of all the 
friends I've got. Just think what you've 
all meant to me and who you all are — 
business men, doctors, lawyers, ministers, 
editors, scores of you, and look at me! 

"I'm a porter, ten hours a day, eleven 
dollars a week, 52 years old and — and — " 
The sentence remained unfinished. 

I hesitated about replying, for I knew 
well the man and his manners. If I spoke 
the wrong reply I would divert the trend 
of his thoughts. So I kept silent, know- 
ing instinctively I was to hear again as 
remarkable a story as was ever told — a 
story of absolute truth and one that would 
do both teller and hearer much good. 



MY START 19 

And then John Goode began and told 
me for the second time this tale. 



"I was two years old when my parents 
took me from Massachusetts to a silver 
camp, the town of Caribou in the northern 
part of the state of Colorado. She — my 
mother — was a good woman. My father 
was a fighting, whiskey-drinking Irish- 
man, as irritable when sober as he was 
cruel and vicious when drunk. I very 
rarely saw him when he was sober. He 
was a bad acter and had left Canada 
some years earlier just in time to escape 
the noose in a good stout rope. The town 
was sixty miles from the nearest railroad 
and the only Bible it contained was my 
mother's. My mother also had the dis- 
tinction of being the only woman in that 
camp in the early days. 

"Before long other children were born 



20 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

to my parents and as my mother's duties 
were many besides caring for her children 
I need not tell you that my early training 
was a totally minus quantity. My par- 
ents kept a boarding house for miners and 
you can easily imagine the environment I 
found myself in and how much attention 
my mother could give to us. There sim- 
ply was no discipline. I grew up — that's 
all. 

"In those days a mining camp was no 
fit place for children. All that these 
camps knew was rough work, rough peo- 
ple, rough times. Everything was hard. 

"I'll never forget how in two winters 
two of my younger brothers and one sister 
died. The men, my father and a friend, 
built tiny coffins out of pine soap boxes 
which I fetched from the store. In these 
crude, rough, unlined affairs they placed 
the little bodies and then nailed on the lids. 
In each instance the death occurred in 



MY START 21 

winter and the frost was deep in the 
ground. Before the graves could be 
opened huge fires were built on the select- 
ed spots. We waited, my mother, father 
and me with a few friends till the ground 
thawed out. No stone or wood marked 
these graves. No enclosure protected the 
little bodies. Soon even the little mounds 
had disappeared, and not long after that 
the incidents themselves were forgotten, 
for it was work, work, work of the hard- 
est sort, with no time or place for senti- 
ment or sorrow. 

"Nor was there time or place for disci- 
pline. When we were well we kept out of 
the way. When we were sick we were a 
trouble, but in the crude manner of the 
day and place we were cared for and re- 
stored to health or we died. 

"Had there been time for discipline it 
would have had no effect on me. My 
father blocked all efforts at anything but 



22 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

work. The only times he noticed me was 
when I crossed him in some childish way 
and then he beat me unmercifully. I soon 
learned that it was safest to keep out of 
his way, and thus it was that I also learned 
to know what "father" meant. My ha- 
tred of him grew apace while my love for 
my mother — if I knew then what love 
meant — deepened. I remember her as a 
meek, quiet, sorrowful woman — a woman 
of few words. She always shielded me as 
best she could, from my father and cov- 
ered up my misdeeds. The beatings he 
gave me hurt her as much as they hurt 
me. I can vividly remember her pleading 
with him to be merciful as he brought a 
stick down on my bare back, blow after 
blow. Sometimes after she had lied to 
save me, a neighbor would tell him, and 
then I would pay dearly for my wrong 
and for my mother's intended kindness. 
"By the time I was seven I had learned 



MY START 23 

well the need of keeping out of my fa- 
ther's sight and I had learned still better 
how to take care of myself. I had done 
my first stealing before I was five years 
old. I had helped myself to money from 
the cash drawer of the only store in camp. 
Why shouldn't I? I didn't know it was 
wrong! All I knew was that I couldn't 
get candy at home. There most of the 
money went for whiskey. No one saw me 
steal the first time or the second time, so 
no one scolded me. No one beat me for 
stealing, so it couldn't be wrong, my child 
mind reasoned. 

"At ten I was incorrigible! I had felt 
my own power. I had experienced every 
sensation, good and bad, the town was 
able to supply. Caribou had become too 
small and my father too cruel. I had 
never been to school, for there was no 
school to go to! And so I reached the 
age of eleven — a liar and a thief! 



24 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

"With that year came the most brutal 
beating a boy ever received. It developed 
into a fight — father and son. I was well 
put up and well versed with my hands and 
he was beastly drunk and mad. With 
that beating came an instant determina- 
tion to run away. Never for an instant 
would I regret leaving home — my broth- 
ers and sisters — my father and mother. 
What were they to me? Had I not shift- 
ed for myself all my life? I could con- 
tinue to do so. 

"I walked the sixty miles to the rail- 
road, to the then little wooden city of 
saloons, gambling houses, and dens of ill 
repute called Denver. It was fed then 
by but one railroad — the old Kansas Pa- 
cific, now the Union Pacific. 

"I remember the thrills as they chased 
themselves up and down my spine when 
from a mountain top, afar off, I caught 
my first glimpse of the city. 



MY START 25 

"It was a walk I'll never forget. Bears 
and Indians and wolves were plentiful, 
and it was a trip that would test the nerves 
of the bravest boy. The long, long day- 
light hours and the dreadful, fearful 
thought of those surely coming nights 
with inky, inky blackness. . . . But little 
did I realise that the blackness of those 
black nights on that runaway journey 
were as broad daylight compared to the 
blackness of the life I was slowly but sure- 
ly walking into. 

"I was on the road four days and three 
nights. I slept on the ground two nights 
and in a deserted mining shack the other. 
I can distinctly remember the howling of 
the wolves and how lonely and frightened 
I was. But not once was I tempted to re- 
turn to my father. He had taught me too 
well his lessons. All during the trip I 
had been fearful lest he should seek me, 



26 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

knowing, of course, that Denver was the 
only place to which I could head. 

"I wonder if he made any effort to find 
me? I wonder what my mother thought 
and how she felt? Never once since I 
passed through the camp on my way to 
the railroad have I seen my father nor 
even heard of him. He must have long 
since passed over the Great Divide, for 
his manner of living fifty years ago could 
only have meant an early end. I have 
seen my mother only twice since and she 
too, no doubt, has passed to her reward. 
All that I ever knew of her life was hard, 
cruelly hard. No woman could stand it 
long. 



CHAPTER II 

AN ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD RUNAWAY! 

"On leaving the mountains and drop- 
ping onto the plain in which is Denver 
I proceeded slowly, walking twice around 
it before entering or speaking to any one. 
After I had sized up the place, I singled 
out what looked to be a boarding house 
and applied for a job. My surmise proved 
to be correct and I was set to work at once 
washing dishes. I didn't like the place 
nor the work, which was the first I'd ever 
done, and so after three days I beat it. 
As nothing had been said about wages, 
none were due me. 

"I went to the railroad yard and picked 
up an acquaintance with an engineer who 

27 



28 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

took my cock and bull story in whole. 
He was a good man and readily consented 
to my riding in the caboose of his freight 
leaving that day for Kansas City. My 
reception on the train of fifty odd freight 
cars and one caboose was cordial. My age 
of course was responsible for that. 

" * Where yer going, son?' 

" '.Where yer been?' 

" 'Yer hungry?' 

"The ice was broken. They took me in 
and shared their grub and bunks with me. 
Here I again experienced what I now 
know to be kindness. It made me feel 
queer. Here were all these rough look- 
ing, dirty men — and no one hit me — no 
one was drunk. They told me stories of 
railroading as it was done in those days, of 
holdups, of wrecks, and my blood fairly 
raced through my system, propelled by 
the beats of a little eleven year old runa- 
way heart. 



A RUNAWAY! 29 

"I'm not telling you this for sympathy, 
God knows I'm not ! I'm telling it to you 
so that the next time you are told of a man 
who is a criminal and who will never be 
anything else, remember my story and of 
the inherent good there was in me and is 
in every other human being, of how that 
little bit of goodness was kindled into 
flame — of how that little flame was nursed 
until it could keep aglow alone. Remem- 
ber my start in life, perhaps the other fel- 
low's start was like mine. I was as yel- 
low a cur as ever lived — a man couldn't 
be more yellow — and yet I had what every 
mortal has — an inherent grain of good- 
ness that's God-given and which no man 
has the right to deny. 

"In four days the train pulled onto a 
siding in the freight yards at Kansas City. 
It had reached the end of its journey. 

"Where was I going? 

"I did not know. 



30 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

"I had heard my mother say she had a 
sister in Massachusetts. I made up my 
mind then that I would go to her. At that 
time I had no idea I was different from 
any normal boy. There had been no means 
of my knowing that the life I was leading 
would take me to state's prison or the gal- 
lows, unless it was checked. I didn't know 
there was such a thing as a prison and gal- 
lows. But I learned about them soon 
enough. Then, however, I was just a 
healthy boy running away to escape a fa- 
ther's uncontrollable temper and desire 
for whiskey. I was on a train of freight 
cars and the men knew why I was there. 
They treated me kindly. But three days 
of kind treatment on a freight train won't 
alter a boy's character. Perhaps if I had 
met men on leaving that freight gang, 
who treated me as they did, this sort of a 
story would never have been told. But I 
didn't meet the same sort of men. 



A RUNAWAY! 31 

"I met men and boys who like myself 
couldn't or wouldn't or didn't recognise 
the difference between right and wrong. 
I met men whose business it was to teach 
young boys to steal and pick pockets just 
as carefully as your boy is being taught 
how to become a manly man and, just like 
your boy, I learned my lessons well. I 
met other men who took these boys, when 
they had become expert, onto the road to 
steal and plunder and for other unspeak- 
able purposes. 

"As I say I learned my lessons well. I 
was an apt pupil — had begun early. My 
age was with me, for who would suspect 
an eleven year old boy of being a thief? 

"I didn't stay long in Kansas City. I 
don't know why, except that way back 
somewhere in my head was that wish to go 
to my mother's sister. I beat my way to 
St. Louis on the Missouri Pacific. Some- 
times I rode in coaches, more often under- 



32 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

neath. Sometimes I begged my food, 
sometimes I stole to procure it, but the 
point is I always got it. Back door and 
front door alike yielded all the food I 
asked. Always my age and story brought 
the lady of the house across. And each 
time I told the story I added more sob 
stuff. Open windows and cellar doors 
got me all else I needed. 

"And then the inevitable happened. 
Why it hadn't happened sooner I can't 
understand. 



CHAPTER III 

MY FIRST ARREST — AGE ELEVEN 

"I made St. Louis late at night and 
forced a window in a stable. Crawling 
into a warm corner of the hay I was soon 
fast asleep. Towards morning the owner 
of the building and a cop appeared. I 
was picked up for entry and further ac- 
cused of threatening to set fire to the 
premises ! 

"The Judge before whom I was ar- 
raigned tried as well as he knew how, to 
show me the folly of my ways. I wonder 
if he had boys of his own. I hope not. I 
wonder how many other boys had previ- 
ously been brought before him. I wonder 
how many followed me into his kindly con- 

33 



34 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

siderate hands. What a story the history 
of all those lives would probably make 
could they now be written. 

"He listened carefully to the charges 
they preferred against me — that one paid 
officer of the law and that big man, the 
owner of the stable — the charges they pre- 
ferred against me, an unknown child. 

"Instantly he made up his mind — he 
knew at once just the best way to handle 
my case — how best to put me in the frame 
of mind not to go into another man's 
stable to sleep. Why shouldn't this man 
— this judge — know what to do with me? 
Hadn't he been practising on other boys 
for years? 

"And so this judge — this man who had 
taken an oath to administer justice impar- 
tially to all who came before him, told me 
in open court before many people that I 
was a worthless, vicious boy — that there 
wasn't room for me in his city, and he 



MY FIRST ARREST 35 

wound up his tirade by giving me the priv- 
ilege of leaving the city for good within 
twenty-four hours or of being sent away 
for a year. I chose the former. 

"Picture that crime against me ! 

"Imagine such a man as that holding 
down such a job! 

"He practically said to me that morning 
in court 'You're helpless and worthless. 
You'll never be any good. You belong in 
prison, but get out of here. We don't 
want to clog our jails with the likes of 
you. Get out of St. Louis. Go some- 
where else and break the law there — not 
here.' 

"I crossed the river to East St. Louis 
on a boat. I don't think the bridge had 
been built then. A freight on the Ohio 
and Mississippi, now the B. & O., was 
pulling out and I made it. 

"I got as far as Sandoval, 111., before 
the crew found me and put me off. Night 



36 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

was falling and the men working about 
the fires let me lie down in the warm sand, 
where I was soon fast asleep. They evi- 
dently suspected I was a waif, for they 
saved scraps of bread and meat from their 
dinner pails, which I ate with great relish 
in the morning. Between the time the 
night shift quit and the day gang went on 
I was on my way afoot down the railroad 
tracks. At Odin, about five miles distant, 
a man stopped me on the main street and 
asked me who I was and where I was 
going. He was Levi Meredith, the county 
surveyor. My size or, rather, lack of it 
and my dilapidated appearance interested 
him. I assumed the name of Harry Rob- 
inson, and told him my parents were dead. 
He questioned me at some length and 
finally offered me a home, which offer I 
accepted. In a week I was sick and for 
almost a week out of my head. To my 
knowledge it was the first time Vd ever 



MY FIRST ARREST 37 

had a doctor. I was living in their stable, 
and it was then I got sick and recovered. 
I lived there five weeks before the wan- 
derlust overtook me. Mr. and Mrs. 
Meredith were away the day I left, and 
before going I emptied the pantry of a 
batch of gooseberry pies — there were 
seven large ones, freshly baked. 

"I caught a freight and made Vin- 
cennes, Ind., the end of the division I was 
riding. It was early in the day, and on 
the outskirts of the quaint French town 
I saw a substantial brick house, where I 
applied for food. The lady of the place 
made me go to the stable, where she filled 
a half barrel with warm water and I took 
a bath — the freight of the night previous 
had been none too clean. After breakfast, 
and a good one, too, I went to sleep in the 
barn. About one o'clock a coloured girl 
from the house awakened me and, giving 
me a tin pail, informed me that I was to 



38 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

go to the raspberry patch and pick berries. 
The pail I threw away, by way of thanks, 
and struck out along the tracks of the 
Terre Haute and Vincennes R. R. It 
was very hot, and before I had gone far 
I fell in a faint on the tracks. 

"Just ahead of me was a work train 
of twelve or fifteen flat cars heavily loaded 
with sand and railroad ties. In order to 
side-track for an express the engineer 
backed his train on top of me. The pain 
and shock as I was dragged along in the 
sand and cinders brought me back to con- 
sciousness and I screamed as men never 
heard mortal scream before. The brake- 
beam of the last car, which came on me 
first, caught my arm and clothing, and 
instead of being cut in two I was pushed 
and dragged along. My screams of agony 
were heard above the noise of the moving 
train and it was brought to a stop. Men 
hurried to the spot and lifted me out, torn 



MY FIRST ARREST 39 

and bleeding. They put me on a sand car 
and backed into Vincennes, where I was 
removed to a hotel and laid out on a card 
table, where a doctor went over my hurts. 
Miraculous as it may seem, I was not 
seriously injured, although the flesh was 
badly torn from my right arm, both above 
and below the elbow. A carriage took me 
four miles outside the city to the poor 
farm, where I was admitted under the 
name of Harry Robinson. I am sure if 
any of the papers of that date remain on 
file, an account of the accident will be 
found. The story spread rapidly, and a 
score or more of people drove out the next 
week to see the boy who had been run over 
by a train and had lived to tell of it. In 
ten days I was able to be about again and 
ran away to the railroad, where I went 
blind baggage, and at Tunnelton, Ohio, 
the crew found me all but blinded by the 
smoke and cinders. I was in mighty bad 



40 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

shape. They took me off and left me with 
some railroad men, who, taking pity on 
me because of my age, fixed me up and 
fed me up. In a short time I was able to 
travel. The men then gave me a pass on 
a passenger train to Cincinnati. 

"I was sick again before I left the train, 
and, after two or three days of aimless 
roving about Cincinnati, I was desperate- 
ly ill with malarial fever. Being a Cath- 
olic by birth I experienced no difficulty 
in securing admittance to a Sisters' Hos- 
pital. I've forgotten the name of the In- 
stitution, but for two months I lay there 
seriously ill. Finally when I became con- 
valescent they transferred me to a Cath- 
olic Protectory two or three miles outside 
the city. There a young student for the 
priesthood became interested in me and I 
spent a good deal of time in his company. 
Two or three times he took me to a show 
in the city. On one of these trips, in the 



MY FIRST ARREST 41 

meantime having become restless, I ran 
away from him and the institution. I re- 
member how he begged me not to leave 
him as an escape would count against him. 
His appeal was useless! He was a kind 
fellow, for he might have spoken to the 
policeman who stood near us, and who 
would have arrested me at once. 

"You mustn't forget that all this time 
I was stealing everything I wanted from 
any one I wanted to. I had become very 
expert with my hands. I could pick a 
door lock, open a locked window, extract 
a pocket-book or open a cash drawer with 
great skill and dexterity. Nothing fright- 
ened me, nothing stopped me, and yet I 
hadn't reached the age of twelve. 

"Not liking Cincinnati, now that I had 
run away from the Protectory, I jumped 
a freight on the Panhandle and made 
Pittsburg. On leaving the railroad yards 
I braced the first man I met and told 



42 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

him a hard luck story — a bunch of lies, of 
course. He proved easy, and took me to 
his house near an iron foundry, of which 
he was assistant superintendent. Fred- 
erick Jones was his name. I wonder if 
he is still alive? He did all for me that a 
father could have done. He clothed and 
fed me and insisted that I stay with him 
till I fully recovered from the effects of 
the fever. When I was again able to 
travel he took up a collection for me from 
among his friends, and with the money we 
bought a ticket to New York. That was 
the first time I'd ever paid for a fare on a 
railroad, and yet I'd ridden hundreds and 
hundreds of miles. 

"Notwithstanding the fact that in those 
days a boy with a ready tongue could beg 
almost anything he wanted, I did compar- 
atively little of it. It was too tame, it 
offered no excitement. I much preferred 
to steal, for that seemed to satisfy me. 



MY FIRST ARREST 43 

'Canada Blackie,' that wonderful exam- 
ple of what 'love' can do for a bad man, 
said, before his regeneration, that the 
greatest sensation he ever had in his life 
he experienced while he held a loaded re- 
volver to the head of an engineer and or- 
dered him to stop the train. I know what 
he meant, for even as a boy I experienced 
my greatest thrills in my most reckless 
and daring crimes. 



CHAPTER IV 

IN NEW YORK AND IN TROUBLE IN ONE 
NIGHT 

"On my very first night in New York 
I was picked up by a cop. I was charged 
with a terrible crime — sleeping in a hall- 
way! The authorities didn't know, mind 
you, whether I was a good boy or a bad 
boy, or whether I had ever been arrested 
before, but they locked me in a cell all 
right. In the morning a chance was given 
me to tell my story and I told it. I told 
them I was an orphan with an aunt in 
Boston. They didn't know whether I 
lied or told the truth. They made no ef- 
fort to find out. 

"Without notifying the Boston authori- 

44 



IN TROUBLE 45 

ties that they were sending them a young 
boy and to be on the lookout for him; 
without waiting to learn whether I would 
shortly be reported missing from some 
home in New York, a policeman took me 
to the Fall River Line and shipped me 
East, like a barrel of pork. 

"Suppose your little boy should run 
away, and should later reach the police. 
Suppose he was foolish enough or wicked 
enough, call it whatever you will, to tell 
the police he lived in Boston. Suppose 
the police did with him as they did with 
me. Would you feel that such a system 
was a wise one? It makes a vast differ- 
ence, you know, whether a man thinks 
generalities or whether he brings the case 
right close home. 

"In those days and in much later days, 
too, such occurrences were common. 
There was no reason other than custom 
for dealing with police cases. Everybody 



46 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

got the same sort of senseless treatment 
dictated by custom. And that method 
came right on down through the years un- 
altered, until recently such men as Judge 
Ben Lindsey of Denver began to use com- 
mon sense and humane methods with re- 
sults that have astonished a public long 
asleep, and have saved hundreds and hun- 
dreds of boys from leading lives of crime. 
And now an era of common sense and 
humanity is dawning in our manner of ad- 
ministering prisons. For years we threw 
men into our prisons. And what did we 
release at the end of the term? Were they 
better or worse for the punishment? 
What chance had they to go straight? 
What does the average individual think 
of a man who has been branded as a crim- 
inal? Tell me! 



CHAPTER V 



DOING MY FIRST "BIT?" 



"Boston proved easy. For about four 
months I lived high and indulged my 
every boyish fancy on the proceeds of my 
stealing. I tackled everything that came 
within my ken and which looked at all 
promising. I knew no fear. Desire at 
once became determination — determina- 
tion at once became action. 

"One day I deliberately walked into a 
candy store, helped myself to the contents 
of the cash drawer and got away before 
the eyes of the astonished proprietress. 
But I had been too bold, too many had 
seen the trick and I was picked up, tried 
and sent away, 

47 



48 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

"They took me first to the almshouse at 
Tewkesbury, a sort of detention station 
prior to delivery at a reform school. But 
they didn't know the boy they were hand- 
ling, and as they made no effort to size 
me up they paid for their carelessness. 
On the third day I planned to escape and 
the next night made a clean 'getaway' and 
took five other lads with me. All these 
boys weakened once they got beyond the 
walls and in a few hours all of them had 
returned and given themselves up to the 
authorities. Not me, however ! 

"Daredevil, reckless kid that I was, I 
at once returned to Boston and stole right 
and left under their very noses. Five 
weeks, or thereabouts, thus went on be- 
fore they caught me, red handed, too, 
stealing fruit from a freight car. 

"They were more careful in their hand- 
ling of me this time and saw to it that I 
was safely landed at once in the State Pri- 



DOING MY FIRST "BIT" 49 

mary School near Palmer, Mass. Al- 
though it was about noon when I arrived, 
I had managed, quite easily by the way, 
to get into trouble by night, and then it 
was that I met Jimmy Lally, the hospital 
nurse. 

"With the exception of one of the prin- 
cipal keepers of Sing Sing Prison, he was 
the most cruel and heartless man I ever 
knew. Each of them gloried in and 
thrived on misery and pain and discom- 
fort in others and neither of them was ever 
known to allow an opportunity to go by 
uncancelled. Two men more wholly un- 
fit for the jobs they held never lived. I 
know. I served under each. Under one 
as a boy. Under the other as a man. 
Who knows better than I know? Who 
could know better than I know? Each of 
these men secured his job through politics. 
Each man held his job through politics. 

"Jimmy Lally looked at me. I wonder 



50 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

if he knew I was only 12 years old? I 
wonder if it would have made any differ- 
ence if he had known? Two huge brass 
keys, each nearly a foot long, were sus- 
pended about his waist by a stout cord. 
And as he looked at me he slowly drew 
this cord in until the two big keys came 
into his hands. He held one in each fist. 

" 'Jack and Mick can play a trick,' he 
said. 

"As he spoke the word 'Jack' he 
brought the key in his right hand down on 
the top of my head with a resounding blow 
and as he spoke the word 'Mick' the key 
in his left hand struck my head an even 
harder blow. 

"The scalp had broken in two places 
and blood streamed down my face. 

"This paid officer of the law was re- 
forming me! 

"You know what hate does for a boy. 
You know what brutality does for a boy. 



DOING MY FIRST "BIT" 51 

I was no exception. I hated that man 
from that moment. At times I would 
have killed him had I found the chance. 
He was a big man and strong. At the 
time I met him he was about sixty years 
old. I wonder how many other boys' 
heads he busted? While I was there it 
was a frequent event, and he always pref- 
aced the action with the same remark 
about * Jack' and 'Mick.' 

"Nor was he the only brute in charge 
of us. I was struck full in the face and 
knocked prostrate by a keeper's clenched 
fist many times. The assistant superin- 
tendent, a big, powerful fellow named 
Tibbetts, set the styles in discipline and as 
he had been, prior to his appointment at 
Palmer, a first mate on deep sea sailing 
vessels, you can imagine how kind, con- 
siderate and gentle a fellow he was to 
place in charge of boys with whom any 



52 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

results were wished for other than hard- 
ened, vicious characters. 

"Tibbetts, like the large majority then 
and now, was a political office holder. 

"I was always a rebel, mind you; al- 
ways on the wrong side of everything. I 
needed discipline, and that badly. But 
every day I stayed at Palmer the chances 
of my reforming were growing less and 
less. I possessed and used the faculty of 
causing more trouble in less time than any 
boy I ever knew or heard tell of. But 
each time I got beat up and came away 
bleeding I added a little more to my al- 
ready large quota of viciousness. What 
could you expect if not that? I wasn't 
old enough to reason that anger and hate 
and viciousness would get me nowhere. 

"After two visits to the dungeons or 
punishment cells I did learn to avoid those 
infractions of rules which meant 'down 
stairs.' It was too terrible. The dun- 



DOING MY FIRST "BIT" 53 

geons and all they meant in that boys' 
school at Palmer were as terrible and as 
cruel as those for hardened burglars in 
San Quenten and Sing Sing in their palm- 
iest days. Again, I know! 

"Can you imagine the effect of such 
treatment on the minds and morals of 
young boys? Thank God that the boys 
of to-day are being treated in a somewhat 
more humane manner. Thank God that 
correctional institutions are now making 
an effort to correct rather than to crush — 
to build up rather than to tear down. 
Thank God for such a woman as Mother 
Booth and for such men as Thomas 
Mott Osborne, Dean Kirchway, Canada 
Blackie, Jack Murphy, Donald Lowrie, 
and others of the new penology ! A bright 
era has dawned and we've all got to keep 
it going! 



CHAPTER VI 

IN WHICH I AM BOUND OUT 

"After I had been at Palmer about a 
year, or possibly a little longer — after my 
body was covered with marks and bruises 
where they had beaten me black and blue 
to reform me and teach me what love 
meant, the great state bound me out to a 
German and his wife at East Hampton. 
This man, whose name I've forgotten, was 
the foreman in a suspender factory. As 
was then the custom I was to remain with 
him until I was twenty-one, during which 
time he was to care for me and give me a 
home. And I in turn was to learn his 
trade and answer to him in all ways. And 
so I went to work in his shop. It lasted 

54 



IN WHICH I AM BOUND OUT 55 

longer than I had expected it would. A 
long five weeks went by before I decided 
that I had learned all I wanted to about 
the manufacture of suspenders. I made 
up my mind to beat it. How was I to do 
it? Instantly the answer came. I was at 
my bench at the time. I dropped what I 
was doing and went straight away to the 
grocer with whom the foreman traded. I 
told that grocer in a plain, simple manner 
that my boss had sent me to him to borrow 
ten dollars until that night. Of course 
the merchant was sceptical and refused to 
let me have the money. Instead of letting 
it go at that (as most boys would have 
done) I argued with him until he was 
finally sorry I hadn't asked him for twen- 
ty. He gave me the ten. 

"I thanked him and left the store. In- 
stead of walking in the direction of the 
shop where my boss was, I went in the op- 
posite direction — down the railroad ties 



56 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

at that — with the ten dollars in my pocket 
and with the grocer looking at me in open- 
mouthed amazement. However, he wasn't 
long in reaching my boss with the story 
and they lost no time in getting a horse 
and buggy. They caught me, of course, 
and brought me back to town. That night 
after supper we took a second buggy ride 
and the big front doors of the State Pri- 
mary School at Palmer closed with a bang 
at my back and I was again a prisoner. 

"During the few weeks in which I had 
been away from the School, the Super- 
intendent had gone and a new man 
had been appointed in his place. Mr. 
Bradford was a very different sort. He 
was kind, naturally. His being a relative 
of the then Lieutenant Governor of the 
State accounted no doubt for a man of 
his temperament being appointed to the 
School. During the Civil War he had 



IN WHICH I AM BOUND OUT 57 

served as a chaplain of a Massachusetts 
regiment, I believe. 

"Very soon Mr. Bradford began to have 
serious trouble with me and my record was 
looked up more thoroughly than ever be- 
fore. He decided that Palmer was not 
the sort of a place I required and so he 
had me transferred to the Home for In- 
corrigible Boys at Deer Island. 

"At this place I came under Superin- 
tendent Blackstone. Here I found the 
food was quite a bit better than at Palmer, 
but outside of that I had stepped from 
the frying pan into the fire or even worse. 
It was an institution for incorrigibles ! 
They said so themselves ! They admitted 
that each inmate was a hopeless case, so 
why question it. Why try and find even 
one soul among them who wasn't ? What 
was the use of trying to make them better 
boys ? You wouldn't treat a dog one-half 
as badly as they treated us. You'd be 



58 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

afraid the dog would spring at you and 
tear you to pieces. And the dog would, 
too, if it got the chance and no onlooker 
would blame the animal. They had the 
school at Palmer resembling a kindergar- 
ten by comparison. If you fell asleep in 
church you got three or four days in a 
dungeon on a scant measure of bread and 
water once in twenty-four hours. These 
dungeons were dark, damp holes in the 
cellar, without a bed or mattress. Some- 
times you got a board to sleep on. There 
were no toilets, so we used the bucket sys- 
tem. 

"If an instructor or a guard smashed 
you in the face and floored you and you 
happened to crawl to your feet sooner 
than was expected you got a second smash 
or a vicious kick. Then after that you lay 
still! 

"I went through all this! I went 
through it at a time in my life when a 



IN WHICH I AM BOUND OUT 59 

boy's character is most easily swayed and 
bent and moulded into something very dif- 
ficult to change as year follows year. 

"However, I had broken laws. I was a 
thief and I should be punished. The fact 
that I was only a young lad (as were all 
the inmates) didn't seem to make any dif- 
ference as to the kind of punishment they 
handed out. 

"Blackstone soon discovered that his 
brutal treatment had but one effect on 
me. It increased my viciousness and 
wickedness and so again I was bound out 
to serve a new master. This time it was 
to a young farmer whose name I can't 
recall. The exact location, too, I've for- 
gotten, although I remember it was a 
small village on the border between Maine 
and New Hampshire. 

"The night of my arrival he met me at 
the train, assumed responsibility for me 
and away we went. We sat up nearly 



60 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

all night in front of a big log fire and 
talked. He asked me a thousand and one 
questions about myself and about the jails 
I'd been in. He called them jails, but the 
state called them reform schools. I told 
him all he wanted to know and more. 
Without realising it I frightened him so 
badly that when at last I went to bed he 
sat down and wrote the authorities at 
Deer Island to come and get me, which 
they did — and so I didn't become a 
farmer. 

"Back at Deer Island among the in- 
corrigibles, myself one of them! Back in 
the dungeon ! Unconscious on the floor — 
knocked there by a paid servant of the 
law! And me a young boy! 

"They simply couldn't stand for me; 
that was all there was to it. They must 
get rid of me. This time they bound me 
over to Sanborn and Boardman Co., of 
Newburyport, Mass., the owners of the 



IN WHICH I AM BOUND OUT 61 

good ship Hiawatha, a two-master in the 
cod fishing industry plying between New- 
buryport and Labrador. For them I was 
to make one voyage and need not return 
to the Home at Deer Island. 

"And so for the last time I left a Re- 
formatory — re-form — a place where a 
boy's habits, character and thoughts are 
supposed to be made over again — new and 
fresh and good. 

"Perhaps they did try! 

"Perhaps the fault was all mine! 

"I knew little enough of good the first 
time I went to a Reformatory, but I knew 
everything that was wrong when I left 
my last one! 

"When I was 46 years old after my last 
prison term I didn't know a bit more 
wrong than I had been taught or had gath- 
ered in Reform Schools. I simply had 
had more experience, that's all. 

"When I stood, unashamed, before 



62 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

Judge Cowing to receive a sentence that 
was to take me to Sing Sing Prison he 
said to me in effect, 'John Goode, your 
name had better have been John Bad. 
You've broken every trust ever laid on 
you. You were paid to uphold the law — 
you were a policeman, and yet you've 
broken the law time and time again. 
You're a bad man; I wish I might give 
you a longer sentence. You deserve it.' 

"Yes, he was right. But he didn't go 
far enough, that's all. He might, and I 
think he should, have told the crowd of 
morbid people who were eagerly listening 
that I had received my criminal educa- 
tion in reform schools : that I was a prod- 
uct of the then method of handling bad 
boys. 



CHAPTER VII 

ON BOARD SHIP — BOUND OUT 

"The night before the schooner sailed 
I was delivered to the skipper and locked 
in a top floor room of his house with the 
grown daughter of the family on guard 
outside. 

"I was to sail in the morning on that 
ship — that abiding place of the devil — that 
piece of hell ! I figured anything was bet- 
ter than the place I had left, so I lay down 
and went to sleep ! 

"Never so long as I live will I forget 
the scene on the wharf at sailing time. I, 
alone, of all who sailed, walked aboard the 
vessel. Some crawled aboard, others were 
carried aboard and the rest were thrown 



64 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

aboard. Each man had a skinful of booze. 
It had been their last night ashore for six 
months to come. As we were to be towed 
out of the harbour and sail up the coast 
light there was no last minute loading or 
work to do and the men made the most 
of their time in the neighbouring 'shock' 
houses. 

"And thus we sailed! At the time it 
made no great impression on me because 
that's about all I'd ever seen. But now 
as I look back at it I sicken — positively 
sicken ! You know what the voyage must 
have been! You've seen both sides of life. 
Fourteen men with little to do on the run 
up, more than enough to do while fishing 
and little to do on the run down. Away 
from civilisation, away from booze — away 
from women — ungovernable tempers — 
vilest of tongues ! 

"I needn't tell you how I was mistreat- 
ed and abused and struck. I won't tell 



ON BOARD SHIP— BOUND OUT 65 

you why I was kicked bodily down into 
the hold of that vessel among thousands 
of dead fish and the man who did it not 
knowing whether I was dead or alive and 
not caring! The point is I lived through 
it and in six months' time was back home. 
Home ! .What a word for me to use about 
myself. 

"The skipper gave me an old sou- west- 
er, a pair of rubber boots and two dollars 
and I had been paid! I was free! 

"I need not go back to the reformatory 
for they were through with me. They had 
reformed me — the great State of Massa- 
chusetts virtually said so in releasing me. 
And, furthermore, had they not found a 
place for me where I could prove my fit- 
ness and prove myself a good boy? Had 
they not bound me out to the skipper of 
the good ship Hiawatha? Surely they had 
done enough ! Had they not left my body 
covered with marks where they had beaten 



06 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

me to teach me the difference between 
right and wrong? What more could any- 
reasonable boy expect? Yes, I was free! 
And so out again I went alone to face the 
world — to buck and beat the tides of for- 
tune. 



CHAPTER VIII 

IN WHICH I MEET MY AUNT 

"The old desire to go to my mother's 
sister again came over me and at once I 
was on my way. Well do I remember ar- 
riving at her house and how shy I felt and 
how I hesitated about entering. Well do 
I remember how glad she was to see me, 
how she cried and hugged and kissed me 
on learning who the big, raw lad in front 
of her was. 

"How strange it seemed! How awk- 
ward I felt! How I shrank from her 
caresses ! It was more than I could under- 
stand. Other women and girls had kissed 
me. But not because they were glad to 
see me. Not because they had learned 

67 



68 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

who I was. Why did she? I know now — 
she loved me — but I didn't know then. 

"I had no more than arrived when I be- 
gan to get uneasy. I remained with her 
only a few hours. The rooms seemed to 
suffocate me and the thought of remain- 
ing inactive and in such small quarters 
sickened me. 

"At noon time my aunt put a good, big 
hot meal in front of me. It was then that 
I told her I must be going on my way. 
One of the fishermen had told me about 
Philadelphia and I had decided to go 
there. My aunt gave me five or six dol- 
lars, all she had in the house. As I was 
leaving I remember her looking at my feet 
and all that remained of the boots I was 
wearing tied to my feet with coarse string. 
She called me back and taking off her 
own shoes gave them to me and I was 
off! 



IN WHICH I MEET MY AUNT 69 

John Goode paused, arose from his 
chair and strode heavily up and down the 
room. Violent emotions surged through 
his huge frame. He stopped in front of 
his chair. I feared he had reached a point 
where he could go no further. I was about 
to speak — to change the subject — when 
he resumed his seat, and looking me full 
in the eyes, said : 

"I remember I was tempted to go back 
to my aunt late that afternoon." 

A far-away look settled over his face 
and I knew he was thinking of all the 
years he had lost — of all that might have 
been his had he but heeded the first good 
temptation he had ever known. After a 
while he regained his composure and re- 
sumed: 

"I made Philadelphia on the trucks in 



70 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

four days. Part of my money I spent on 
clothing of which I was in sore need. 

"What a strange thing it is how easily 
like meets like in this world ofttimes with 
little or no effort. Immediately I ran 
into a gang of men who had boys stealing 
for them both in the city and on the road, 
and as I knew that well and nothing else 
I had no difficulty in securing a job and 
on the road I went. 

"You probably wonder how it was that 
most of the people I met were thieves 
working gangs of boys. Wouldn't it have 
been stranger otherwise? I was riding 
freights mostly. Such men in those days 
made their headquarters in or near rail- 
road yards and they were on the lookout 
for boys. I was a boy. They knew the 
type of lad I represented. I knew the 
type of man they represented. It didn't 
take long to get wise, for we didn't talk 
weather, politics or foreign exploration. 



CHAPTER IX 

NOW A PROFESSIONAL THIEF 

"In exactly the same way that I beat 
my way East as an eleven-year-old boy I 
now retraced my steps and beat my way 
West as an experienced and expert thief. 
I can't tell you how it was that gambling 
got so strong a hold on me. I had always 
gambled even as a small boy, but the habit 
grew on me rapidly now as all evil habits 
do until all at once I realised that I was its 
slave — I was completely in its grip. So 
badly had I the habit that instead of steal- 
ing because stealing satisfied me, I found 
I was stealing in order that I might have 
means with which to satisfy my desire for 
chance — for the table, the cards and the 
horses. 

71 



72 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

"By this time I must confess I knew 
fully the wrong in the life I was leading. 
I was now beyond fifteen and ignorance 
could excuse me no longer. My powers 
of observation were naturally keen and 
the training they had received had not 
dulled them any. I had suddenly realised 
that the side of the fence I had chosen for 
my path through life was the crooked one. 

"I began to think about it. I began to 
wonder about people and about things. 
This was something I'd never done before. 
It proved mighty interesting. The peo- 
ple I thought about and the things I 
thought about were the only people and 
the only things I knew. I couldn't get 
outside of my environment and so I didn't 
change. And I know lots of people to- 
day who ought to get outside of their pres- 
ent environment but who can't. 

"I knew the biggest gamblers between 
New York and Chicago and I frequented 



NOW A PROFESSIONAL THIEF 73 

their places, I knew the most daring 
'yeggmen' — the most skilful 'dips' — the 
whole profession in fact. And so when I 
began to think about people those were 
the people I thought about. I knew those 
people were doing dishonest and unlawful 
things and so when I began to think about 
things those were the things I thought 
about. Like thousands and thousands of 
other folks I did all my thinking along the 
lines of least resistance! 

"Heretofore most of my stealing had 
been done because I needed something — 
food — clothes — fares or living necessities 
of one sort or another. Now, however, 
came the big change. I began to steal as 
a business, as a profession. And at fif- 
teen then I had become a professional 
thief. That means one who realises the 
wrong when he stops to think about it 
(which he never does), one who willingly 
and without duress accepts such work as a 



74 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

life task, as a means of accomplishing that 
which has domination over the mind. As 
the desire for gambling dominated all else 
in me I became a professional thief that I 
might gamble with the proceeds ! 

"What does it matter how many other 
times I was arrested for breaking the law 
or how many other prison terms I served? 
I've told you in detail my life to this point 
simply because these events took place 
when I was a boy. And an uneducated, 
untrained and naturally wild boy of eleven 
or thirteen or fifteen should not be expect- 
ed to reason out successfully problems as 
big as my problems were. It isn't reason- 
able. As I look back at it all now I can 
excuse the result I had become at fifteen. 
From then on, however, I can't excuse it 
and I make no effort to do so. 

"I want to pass over the next ten or 
fifteen years quickly but I want you to 
know them because I want you to know 



NOW A PROFESSIONAL THIEF 75 

the sort of a creature I was when I first 
began to know what life really meant — to 
know what opportunities life gives us — to 
know the joy of being of use and of do- 
ing for others — to know the purpose for 
which God put me here. 

"Yes, I went to prison again and again. 
The only reason I am not a murderer is 
because the bottle I used as a club was a 
full one and it broke when it smashed his 
skull. In prison I was punished again 
and again. And after an absence of about 
fifteen years New York again became my 
hangout. 

"I had reached manhood and ten years 
more — physically, I mean. Mentally and 
morally I hadn't even begun. Each suc- 
ceeding year my disposition had become 
meaner, dirtier and blacker. My temper 
was a thing to dread and my size and 
strength coupled with it made a combina- 
tion few men dared question. 



CHAPTER X 



GETTING IN RIGHT 



"Society owed me a living, I reasoned 
out and I proceeded to collect it. Noth- 
ing good got even a look-in at my soul. 
I hated all men who were honest and I be- 
lieved there were very few such. Every 
one I knew was a grafter. My only de- 
sire was to gamble and I was cheap and 
dishonest even among my own kind. 

"What thief and gambler is there who 
doesn't finally locate in New York to stay 
until it gets too warm for him? And so 
I came. The crowds of visitors, the ex- 
citement, the chance for easy money, all 
these things entranced and held me. Co- 
ney Island and its adjacent race tracks 

76 



GETTING IN RIGHT 77 

thrilled me. It goes without saying that 
I was a hard drinker — a drunk. For a 
long time I didn't use whiskey, but the 
day came. After repeated losses my 
nerves needed something to brace them 
and whiskey did the trick. Thousands of 
men start that way. 

"I hadn't been here in New York long 
before I became acquainted with a bunch 
of cheap ward politicians — the hangers-on 
to those who governed your city. Thank 
God their kind is fast disappearing. 
Events of the past few years have either 
cleaned them out or compelled them to put 
on the soft pedal. Things began to come 
easier. My new friends, each a gambler 
and drinker, were wise and I lost no time 
in getting wise too! 

".With friends like my new ones, poli- 
ticians, I became more daring, more reck- 
less. It was easy to avoid trouble, for in- 
fluence was bought and sold like any of 



78 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

the household commodities you are fa- 
miliar with. Protection was an article of 
merchandise like coal or like stocks. The 
price fluctuated with the conditions. 
Sometimes it was cheap — sometimes ex- 
pensive, but it could always be had. Some- 
times it was bought with cash, sometimes 
with cigars, whiskey and women, and at 
other times with personal service. 

"I became a part of that side of New 
York. I aligned myself with the lowest 
and most despicable end of society and I 
did it all with a full knowledge of what 
it meant. 

"It was about this time that women be- 
came a factor in my life. Women figured 
largely in the new circle of friends among 
whom I was now travelling. I mean 
women — not wives I" 



CHAPTER XI 



IN WHICH I MARRY 



"About this time I learned of a woman 
who was employed in the rectory of one of 
New York's swellest churches on a street 
in the Twenties. This woman had a bank 
roll of about two thousand dollars, the 
hard-earned savings of many years of toil. 
To me that sounded good. With two 
thousand dollars I could make a killing at 
the track. The more I thought about that 
two thousand the more I wanted it. The 
more I thought about owning it the more 
I thought about owning the owner of that 
two thousand also. I laid a wager I'd 
get her. 

"It was time I married. All my friends, 

79 



80 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

the cheap politicians, were married. There 
were times in the life we were leading 
when it was a good thing to be known as 
being married. When it wasn't necessary 
as a sort of protection they didn't care 
whether any one knew they were married 
or not. And then again, a home and a 
wife were handy, convenient things when 
one wanted to sleep off a drunk or when 
one wanted a game of poker. It would 
be convenient for me to have a wife now 
and so I promptly set out to get one. 

"Did I love this woman? No, I did not. 
I couldn't for the life of me have told what 
it meant to love. And so I deceived this 
good, pure woman that I might make her 
my wife, secure her savings and then treat 
her as fancy dictated, keep her or throw 
her over. I covered up my past. That 
was easy for she believed in me. I asso- 
ciated myself with her church and through 
her I was made its janitor. It's hard for a 



IN WHICH I MARRY 81 

man to believe that any one could be as 
yellow as I was with that woman. But 
the fact remains that I was. I married 
before she even suspected that I drank. 
Here I was, a lying, drinking, gambling, 
thieving man, a Catholic janitor of a 
Protestant Church and the husband of as 
pure and innocent a woman as ever lived. 

"It's hard to tell a story like this, but 
it's the truth! That's the thing I had be- 
come ! That's what years of sin made me 
— that's what sin will make of any one if 
given time. Not only because it's true do 
I want to tell it but because through sev- 
enteen years of the same treatment, yes 
and worse treatment, that true and brave 
and loyal little woman stood by me and 
her marriage vows — for better or for 
worse, they had been! 

"The two thousand was easily obtained 
and went as easily just as planned. Then 
we were busted. And so again I went to 



82 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

stealing for I had to drink and I had to 
gamble and that required more money 
than the church paid me. 

"We were now in a little place of our 
own, she in the meantime having left her 
duties in the rectory. The women of the 
parish, many of them very wealthy, loved 
my wife and some of them visited her in 
our little home. I met them both at home 
and at the church, and I acknowledged 
their love and their many kindnesses to my 
wife by helping myself to those of their 
belongings which pleased my fancy. 

"Sometimes I came home to her regu- 
larly. Sometimes for days and weeks at 
a time she didn't know whether I was dead 
or alive. 

"But she prayed! 

"She prayed for me till the day she 
passed away. 

"God answers prayer. He answered 
hers. That's my greatest comfort now! 



IN WHICH I MARRY 83 

"And then came a time when she, penni- 
less and alone, was forced to go out and 
earn her own living. She could get noth- 
ing from me and she was too proud to ask 
for aid at the only other place where she 
might have expected to find it and where 
she would have found it. And thus things 
went on! More and more of the time I 
was away and one after another of her 
friends dropped their calling. She would 
not give me up so they were forced to give 
us up. 

"When I needed money quickly, which 
happened frequently, I'd take all she had 
— steal her paltry earnings — clean her out 
of everything of value. Time after time 
this happened and still she stuck, wishing, 
hoping, begging, crying, praying that I 
would change. 

"And me? Yes, I promised! I'd 
promise anything for money! 



84 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

"That then was the sort of husband I 
made her. 

"There are men to-day doing the same 
things. I want them to know my story — 
to know that no matter how far down a 
fellow gets there's a sure road up — a sure 
road to happiness for them and for their 
wives! 



CHAPTER XII 

IN WHICH I BEGIN TO SLIDE DOWNHILL 
FROM WHICH THERE IS BUT ONE PATH 
BACK 

"The New York pace in the under- 
world to which I belonged was a pretty 
stiff one. It required great nerve force to 
keep it up. A man needs stimulation in 
order to stand it long. The life keeps a 
man up day and night. I was no excep- 
tion and I needed stimulation. Like all in 
my class I thought whiskey gave it to me. 
Before long I was either drunk or half 
drunk day and night. And then my skill 
as a thief began, little by little, to disap- 
pear. I bungled things that I used to get 
away with easily. My nerve had gone too. 

85 



86 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

The sharp, keen edge of my wits had be- 
come dulled by drink. The days of easy 
money were gone. It was harder and 
harder to get. And then came a time 
when I was forced to go to my friends, the 
politicians, and ask for a job. 

"There was still enough of me left in- 
tact so that at times I could be of use to 
them and I got the job. They made me a 
foreman in the Street Cleaning Depart- 
ment. What a fine specimen of a man to 
be working for the city! What a type to 
put in charge of their workmen. How- 
ever, I was part of a rotten political bunch 
and I was taken care of just as others, be- 
fore and after me, were cared for. 

"There on the department things eased 
up a bit. There was considerable to be 
had in the way of graft and I wasn't long 
in getting wise. To most of it, I had been 
tipped off in advance. The rest I dug up 



I BEGIN TO SLIDE DOWNHILL 87 

and developed myself. The biggest clean- 
up came from the snow. 

"My wife got none of my money, not 
even my salary. I gambled it all away 
long before I received it. She was earn- 
ing what she could in a bitter fight to 
clothe and feed herself and pay the rent. 

"I pulled myself together temporarily 
after I had been on the Street Cleaning 
Department about three years. I went a 
step higher through the same politicians. 

"All my life, mind you, I had broken 
the law — the law of every state and city 
I'd ever visited. Law was nothing to me. 
Those who were paid to uphold the law 
were nothing to me except grafters. I 
didn't believe there was an honest police- 
man in the world. Every one I had known 
was crooked. Understand me, please, I 
don't want to cast any suspicion on police- 
men as a group. I am telling only what 
I know from personal experience. All of 



88 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

my intimate friends among them and 
among those who in any way contributed 
to the conduct of the great city of New 
York were crooks or grafters in a small or 
big way, depending only on opportunity. 

"Despite my record and my principles, 
well known to all who were instrumental 
in securing my appointment, I was made 
a member of the city police force in June 
of 1900. There, of course, I had all sorts 
of opportunity for inside information on 
the ponies. I knew all the poolrooms and 
all the bookmakers. In addition there 
were always crooks and gamblers anxious 
to stand in with the cops and thus I was 
always getting good tips. 

"Never in my life had I gambled so 
recklessly. I could think of nothing else 
and did nothing else. In all the time I 
was on the force I didn't do one honest 
day's work. I didn't have to. I was in 
right at first and after that I didn't know 



I BEGIN TO SLIDE DOWNHILL 89 

or care what I did for I was nearly dead 
from drink and all else that went with the 
life I was leading. 

"It was while on the force and in my 
uniform too that I escaped being a mur- 
derer by the smallest possible margin. I 
had left my beat to get a drink at a joint 
which was being run by the mistress of a 
man well up in city affairs. The place 
was a favourite hangout for members of 
the force, officers as well as patrolmen. 
I was drunk at the time. An Italian 
stood at the bar. We had never seen one 
another before. He misunderstood a 
drunken jeer I made to a friend and he 
called me a name not even a low-down 
thief would tolerate. Blind with rage I 
picked up a full bottle of soda, raised it 
high above my head and brought it down 
on the top of his skull with all my 
strength. Again the politicians! They 
sent me into retirement for three days 



90 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

while the affair was hushed up. The man 
didn't die, although it was five weeks be- 
fore the doctors would admit that he could 
live. On the fourth day I returned to my 
post. Fifty dollars' worth of cigars and 
liquors squared off my indebtedness to the 
gang who had covered up for me! 

"Another man than yourself, one not 
f amiliar with the human dregs who popu- 
late certain sections of New York, would 
not admit that I could go any lower down 
the social scale. But I was a long way 
from the bottom still! 

"Before long the day came when even 
my friends, the politicians, could not longer 
afford to cover my tracks — to back me up 
in the front office. Shortly thereafter I 
was transferred to a precinct on Staten 
Island. There I went gambling without 
restraint. My nerves broke completely in 
two for the first time. I was heavily in 
debt. My courage was gone and I was 



I BEGIN TO SLIDE DOWNHILL 91 

on the verge of D. T.'s; I hadn't a cent. 
My room rent was due and the landlord 
was insisting on payment. Had I been 
able to go to New York I would have 
stolen or borrowed the few necessary dol- 
lars from my wife. 

"As I left the station house that night 
I raised a twenty-five cent loan and 
bought a vial of poison — for a dog I told 
the druggist — but in reality it was for 
something far worse than a dog. I was 
through with it all and had decided to go 
the 'Dutch route.' I wrote a couple of 
letters, sealed them and then locked the 
door to my room from the inside. I 
thought I was a man. I didn't know how 
big a coward I was. I removed my coat, 
vest, trousers, shirt and shoes and stood in 
my underwear with a big flask of whiskey 
in one hand and the vial of acid in the 
other. Try as I would I couldn't muster 
sufficient courage to drink the stuff. A 



92 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

dozen times the vial got almost to my lips 
but no further. Not so the whiskey, how- 
ever, and I finally fell to the floor in a 
dead, drunken stupour. In the morning 
I threw the poison down a sink. That 
debauch lasted about three days for I 
made a killing early that day in a pool- 
room and cashed in about twenty. 

"When I finally returned to my station 
house I found serious charges, which I 
could not successfully beat, had been pre- 
ferred against me. I removed my shield, 
unbuckled my belt and turned in my gun 
and stick. I had beaten a dismissal by 
only a few days! 



CHAPTER XIII 

MY LAST PRISON TERM 

"Back in New York again and without 
money, without pull, without friends. No, 
that was not so! I knew there was one 
who was still my friend, my wife! She 
had moved and I had some little difficulty 
in locating her. Then I found that one 
of her former loyal friends, a member of 
her old church, was again in touch with 
her. 

"Jane was glad to see me — she cried 
and implored me to stay with her and to 
behave myself. This, of course, I readily 
agreed to do and I did so until she got 
together a few spare dollars and then I 
left and took the money with me. I did 

93 



94 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

not see her again until I was sentenced to 
six years at hard labour in Sing Sing 
Prison by Judge Cowing. 

"With the few dollars she gave me I 
got beastly drunk. I met an old acquaint- 
ance who tipped me off to a good thing. 
I needed money quickly if I was to make 
use of this information. A car soon 
brought me to the home of my wife's old 
friend, this woman who was again be- 
friending her. On other occasions I had 
stolen from her, but because of her friend- 
ship for Jane she had refused to prosecute 
me. I entered her house and stole an ex- 
pensive silver service. I was caught, tried, 
convicted, sentenced, and away I went, 
with my wife promising me her continued 
love and support and begging me to turn 
over a new leaf. Again I promised her I 
would. 

"I was an interesting and strange crea- 
ture as with nineteen others I was taken 



MY LAST PRISON TERM 95 

over the New York Central to Sing Sing 
to serve my last 'bit.' The fact that I was 
going to 'stir' didn't disturb me. I felt no 
shame or remorse over that. Nor did I 
regret the act for which I had been sent 
away. My friends had deserted me, the 
old 'pull,' which had safeguarded me so 
many times, had been withdrawn, and I 
was sore. I wanted to get even. 

"One by one the big events in my life 
passed in review before my eyes. I saw 
my mother and my father. I saw the 
Judge who drove me out of St. Louis as a 
boy. I saw Jimmy Lally and the 'screws' 
and keepers who had mauled and beaten 
me in all the different places where I had 
done time. And then I saw my wife in 
her poverty and anguish of heart. So far 
as any effect was concerned I might as 
well have been thinking of the moon or 
the stars. All emotion, all feeling of 
right, all honour, were buried in me, 



96 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

Buried under years of dissipation and sin, 
buried so completely that I was as vicious 
and heartless a man as ever lived. 

"Life in the various 'stirs' I had been in 
taught me one thing well — to obey rules. 
Not because they were rules or because it 
was right to obey rules, but because the 
powers that made them had sticks loaded 
at the end with lead, and guns and pistols 
and solitary punishment cells and the 
power to deprive me of food and water 
and all I had was a pair of bare fists. And 
bare fists against a dozen armed 'screws' 
didn't stack up good. As a rule prison 
authorities have no trouble with second, 
third and fourth termers. They're wise! 
Their spirit has been broken. It's only 
the new fellows, the men with spirit and 
blood, full of life and fight, that cause 
trouble in prisons ! And instead of taking 
that spirit and blood and fight and turning 
it in the right direction they kill it — grind 



MY LAST PRISON TERM 97 

it out of a man, crush his very soul, make 
him detest himself for being alive and 
make him hate with a fury that would kill 
if it got the chance. And then those men 
are turned loose and expected to go 
straight — expected to be good ! 

"During the whole of my stay I locked 
on The Flats.' That's the ground floor of 
the cell house. It's only eighty-two years 
old and it's only been condemned about 
eight times. For eighty-two years human 
beings have been thrown into 'The Flats' 
where the larger majority, myself one of 
them, contracted rheumatism. Don't 
blame the authorities, blame the cell house. 
The authorities wouldn't give us toilets so 
why should they give us rheumatism? Be 
reasonable, man! The whole system of 
caring for us was worse than disgraceful 
— it was barbaric. .We were locked in 
dirty, filthy, vermin-filled cells late Satur- 
day afternoon. We were kept there all 



98 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

night, all day Sunday, all Sunday night, 
and when the Monday was a holiday we 
had a 'double header,' as we called it, and 
were released on Tuesday at 6 a. m. It's 
impossible for you or any one else who 
hasn't done a 'stretch' like that to realise 
what it means. We came out with nerves 
on edge, ready to fight at anything — 
ready to tear a man to pieces at the slight- 
est provocation. 

"I got along fairly well because I be- 
haved myself. Being an ex-cop, I was 
accepted only by a choice few as being all 
O.K. Prisoners, as a class, have a motto, 
'Once a cop, always a cop.' We even 
made 'book' in the cart and wagon shop 
where I worked. One of the 'screws' had 
a 'runner' who kept me informed as to 
what horses had already won their races, 
and then we opened up and did a swell 
business. I had been a stealing, grafting 
cop — had known other grafting cop? — 



MY LAST PRISON TERM 99 

had seen politicians get rich on graft — 
knew judges who were grafters — had 
never known even one lawyer who wasn't 
a grafter, and here on the inside were 
prison attendants, lots of them, grafting 
on the inmates. Do you wonder that con- 
victs as a class doubt society is on the level 
with them? 

"The public is pretty well informed as 
to what Sing Sing was in those days. Mr. 
Osborne has taken care of that. I'd seen 
lots of filth and rottenness in my day but 
I'd seen nothing to touch what I found 
there. The cell house was alive — literally 
— with vermin. The stench from those 
hundreds and hundreds of buckets was 
awful at all times, and in the heat of sum- 
mer was almost unbearable — it made my 
eyes feel like they were afire. The food 
and the tin plates we ate from were rotten. 
You'll wonder perhaps how anything 
could make me less of a man than I was, 



100 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

but the conditions I've mentioned did do 
that as they did in the case of every man 
who lived under them. Such a result was 
inevitable. 

"The days and weeks and months 
dragged by and then a year, and another 
long year started in just the same way. 
We were rotting. There was not any- 
where near enough work to keep us busy 
and so we rotted in those 3% x 6 x 7-foot 
holes in that pile of granite put there 
eighty-two years ago for men to suffer in, 
that their evil ways might be made good 
ways. What a chance! Finally the day 
drew near when I could appear before the 
Parole Board. Mrs. Booth, the 'Little 
Mother' as she is affectionately called by 
thousands of 'cons' and 'excons', came reg- 
ularly to the prison. I attended her serv- 
ices simply because I could get out of my 
cell for a short time. And then one day 
I spoke to her and she offered to help me 



MY LAST PRISON TERM 101 

secure my release provided I would do as 
I should have done long ago. Like I had 
done hundreds and hundreds of times be- 
fore, I made a promise on my honour to 
reform and serve God from then on. 

"And so Mrs. Booth secured my release 
after a stubborn fight before the Parole 
Board. 

"Was I thankful and grateful? Yes, 
just long enough to get clear of the joint 
— that's all. The 'Little Mother' sent me 
to Hope Hall where so many of her boys 
have come to realise what right means and 
how good it feels to be right — where so 
many of her boys have found God. 

"Like a low-down cur I skipped in a 
couple of weeks and landed down and out 
in New York, but this time in a new sec- 
tion — the Bowery. 

"Each month, in my report to the 
Parole Officer, I lied. It was easy to put 
it over — what did they care? 



CHAPTER XIV 

AT THE BOTTOM OF THE BOTTOM 

"Just as there is but one New York 
and one Paris and one Venice, so there is 
but one Bowery! There's no other street 
in the world like it that I know of. It's 
peopled with the dregs of humanity from 
the four corners of the globe — good and 
bad men, but all of them down and out. 
Down so far that not many of them ever 
get back. Down so low that there's just 
one of two things left to do — get up or die. 

"The cheap, dirty lodging houses are 

packed to the doors nightly with these 

poor fellows, some of whom are there 

reaping the harvest of their own sowing 

while others there are the cruel victims of 
102 



THE BOTTOM OF THE BOTTOM 103 

circumstances over which they had little 
or no control. 

"The thief, the 'dip/ the 'yegg,' the 'con/ 
the black sheep of the well-to-do family, 
the green-goods man, all of them are there, 
too old or broken to longer carry on their 
shady trades. The sick men, young and 
old, good and bad, they are there too, 
roaming about, eating and sleeping when 
and where they can, hoping against hope 
that the next moment may be their last. 
The bum is there too, living but never 
working, and he's there in goodly num- 
bers. By far the greatest number though 
are there because of their inability or un- 
willingness to desert the ranks of Old 
King Booze. You can't call it alcohol, 
it's anything but that. Those fellows 
can't get a 'kick' out of good whiskey and 
many of them can't get one out of 'third 
rail.' What a life! 

"There's still another class there and 



104? THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

Heaven forbid that it should continue. 
It's the young class composed of boys who 
have been unable to resist the call to come 
to the great city, expecting to find plenty 
of helping hands and lots of work. Who 
is there, tell me, to take these boys by the 
hand? They wind up, after the small 
purse is gone, on the Bowery. 

"Among that motley frightful popula- 
tion I fitted into a waiting place. They 
are always waiting for newcomers down 
there and they don't have to wait long 
either — that's the greatest pity of it all — 
they come faster than they go. Thus the 
great change that has taken place in the 
last few years is accounted for. There 
was a time when real 'bad men' haunted 
the Bowery and there pulled down their 
drag. Not so to-day, for the hard men 
and the gangs have gone east or west and 
some north, and left the old street ex- 



THE BOTTOM OF THE BOTTOM 105 

clusively for the men nearly through — for 
the man who has failed. 

"Failed! Yes, that's it— the Bowery 
might well be called the Street of Fail- 
ures! 

"Was I a failure? I wouldn't have 
admitted it then. I'd soon be back up 
town. I remember I figured it out that 
way. 

"While I had been doing my 'bit' up 
the river I had worked out an elaborate 
system to beat the ponies and had figured 
that with $1,537.00 I could beat the book- 
makers to a crisp. Any one would think 
that I'd been up against them often 
enough to know that in the long run they 
always held the trump card and couldn't 
be beaten. It takes a long time to teach 
some people, doesn't it? 

"It seemed as though it ought to be 
very easy to get $1,500.00. In the old 
days I could have done it, maybe in a day, 



106 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

certainly in a week. But on the Bowery- 
it might take two weeks, I figured. So 
at it I went. The pickin' was poor, my 
pep had gone and the 'rot-gut' I'd been 
drinking for whiskey had taken all the 
flexibility out of both fingers and brain. 
'Suckers' were few and far between and 
when you did get one a 'ten spot' was a 
big haul. I never really knew how many 
Ingersoll watches there were until I saw 
the Bowery worked. I never got the 
fifteen hundred or anything like it. 

"A night or two ago as I walked up 
that old sin-soaked sidewalk I passed a 
party of shimmers — men in evening 
clothes attending an equal number of ex- 
pensively dressed women. It gave me a 
start, for do you know the feeling a party 
like that arouses in the hearts of the poor 
devils that invest the dives down there? 

"I'll tell you! Picture a back room of 
a saloon carpeted with dirty sawdust two 



THE BOTTOM OF THE BOTTOM 107 

inches deep, spotted here and there with 
filthy spittoons full and overflowing. One 
or two yellow gas flames vainly trying to 
fight a room full of foul, smoke-laden air. 
Imagine a dozen to two dozen half -dead, 
half-fed, half -mad, half-clad men lolling 
and lying around in cheap rickety chairs. 
Some are dead drunk, some are fighting 
drunk, while the remainder would like to 
be drunk only they haven't the price. 
And then somehow, by means of a never- 
failing underground system of communi- 
cation, comes the single word 'Shimmers'! 
"The swells march in, a merry, laugh- 
ing crowd, trying hard to act as though 
they were quite accustomed to it all. They 
are more careful about ordering drinks 
than they need be. They are served the 
best in the house and the boss sees it 
reaches them 'right.' No petering a lot 
of drinks like that; it would mean too big 
a fuss. 



108 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

"Some one of the men pulls out a bunch 
of yellow stuff, settles for the round, and 
passes the waiter a good fat tip. 

"In that roll that's flashed there's often 
more money than some of the poor devils 
in the room have seen in a year. Those 
not too drunk to comprehend, grip the 
tables in front of them while beads of per- 
spiration form in the hollows of their 
hands. Their eyes light up with anger, 
resentment and hate. But no further 
sign is given. An attempt to pull any- 
thing off on a bunch like that would mean 
serious trouble 'down town.' It's better 
to wait till they leave the joint and the 
men separate into ones and twos after 
leaving the women. 

"I've felt all this many times. I re- 
member one party in particular headed by 
a fresh young guy who thought he knew 
it all. He began by ordering, in a loud 
voice, a round for the house. He flashed 



THE BOTTOM OF THE BOTTOM 109 

too big a roll! Next morning we read in 
the papers of a young fellow answering 
his description, having been found uptown 
in a hallway cleaned out completely and 
still in a stupour. He never knew who 
did it, nor did I. 

"Slumming is not dangerous business 
now, but it's dirty business though. If 
those people who practise it only knew the 
temptations they stir up and the sad and 
bitter memories they quicken in those poor 
fellows they would keep away or approach 
the problem in a more serious frame of 
mind. 



CHAPTER XV 

JUST BEFORE I TURNED! 

"I found a wholly new kind of work 
on the Bowery — the lowest down and 
dirtiest occupation it is possible to under- 
take. It just suited me and the low-tide 
condition of manhood I was in. A thief 
or a 'yegg* couldn't be bought to do it. 
Most 'bums' would turn up their noses at 
it and yet it was good pay. It was strike 
breaking — scab stuff — and the conditions 
under which it was done and the way we 
were handled would sicken a pig. But it 
didn't sicken me. I liked it! Nobody 
with any sense would ask a real man to 
do it — they looked up fellows like myself, 

and we were not a few. It didn't require 
no 



JUST BEFORE I TURNED! Ill 

much urging to make me join the Pinker- 
tons and go out strike breaking. My first 
job was at the big strike in Philadelphia. 

The drunker we got the less we cared 
how dangerous was the situation and the 
better our bosses liked it. So they gave 
us all the stuff we wanted. We had quan- 
tities of it in the car barns and on the cars 
themselves. Any time at all, anywhere, 
we were ready to fight to a finish with- 
out the slightest urging. That was part 
of the game and was what we were 
brought down to do, and so long as there 
was any strike left there was plenty of 
booze left. 

"After things had quieted down suffi- 
ciently we would be paid, and well too, 
and then escorted to the railroad in a 
bunch and sent back to New York. It 
would never do for Philadelphia to have 
us turned loose there and it would go 



113 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

badly with each one of us individually if 
we stayed. 

"I always got back from a trip like that 
with a good-sized roll and so long as it 
lasted I was busy day and night drinking 
and gambling — a never-ending succession. 

"McGuirk's Suicide Hall, The Alliga- 
tor, and Nick Solomon's, beside a dozen 
others, became my hangouts. They were 
the hardest and lowest down dives in the 
city and I was probably the hardest and 
lowest down man in the city — again like 
met like! 

"It was dangerous business for a 
stranger to show a bill in any one of those 
dumps. I've 'rolled' men for as little as a 
dollar. .When a man's been 'rolled' he's 
been cleaned out of everything convertible 
quickly into booze and then thrown out the 
side door into the gutter, probably to be 
picked up by a cop and arrested for in- 
toxication. 



JUST BEFORE I TURNED! 113 

"I wonder how much the public knows 
about those dives. Very, very little I fear. 
At the time of which I speak the authori- 
ties knew all about them. After a big 
haul the thieves would return to these 
dumps and then divide up with the repre- 
sentatives of the law who had been tipped 
off and who had shut their eyes and closed 
their mouths ! 

"I wonder if you realise how they chase 
a man's coin ? I wonder if you know what 
little chance a man has of coming out of 
one of those places with so much as a 
nickel left? After one o'clock in the morn- 
ing they used to let us sleep all night in 
the back room if we had the price of a 
drink left. And the stuff came then, two 
hookers to the nickel. You hadn't a 
chance in the world of holding back a dime 
for a 'pad.' Many and many a man is 
forced to 'carry the banner,' that is, walk 
the streets all night. They can't hold back 



114* THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

the price of a 'pad, 5 or even a nickel for 
two of those early morning drinks, with 
the privilege of sleeping in the back room. 

"When it wasn't too cold it was much 
more desirable to 'carry the banner' than 
to sleep on a 'pad' in those rotten, foul- 
smelling ten-cent lodging houses which 
line the Bowery for blocks. They are 
breeding places of crime, vermin and dis- 
ease. They are everything they should 
not be and not one single thing they 
should be. 

"There's big money in it — the way 
those houses are run. Why doesn't some 
wealthy man or group of men equip a ten- 
cent lodging house with room say for five 
hundred men? Keep it clean and restrict 
it rigidly to men not drunk. Provide 
showers with hot and cold water. I'd 
guarantee to keep it full all the time with 
honest, sober, deserving men, men who 
would make good if they could find a place 



JUST BEFORE I TURNED! 115 

where they could sleep clean, and where 
they would be out of drink's temptation. 
I know of many cases where men who are 
'off the stuff' and putting up a good fight 
have been awakened by some one in a 
nearby bunk inviting them to have a drink 
from an outstretched bottle. What chance 
has a fellow of quitting the stuff when 
he is reduced to living in joints of that 
calibre? 

"The right kind of a house could be run 
for ten cents per 'pad' and no one would 
lose a penny — they might even make a 
little! There certainly must be men, ten 
of them, who would be willing to form a 
company and subscribe, say twenty-five 
thousand dollars each, for a purpose like 
that! It's the biggest need the Bowery 
has to back up and make more effective 
the rescue work now going on there. 

"Where are these men? Who are they? 
Tell me! 



116 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

"How many of your friends or the gen- 
eral public realise that there are fully 
thirty thousand men in New York City 
who, though honest and willing to work, 
can't earn more than seventy-five cents a 
day? Most of these men are down town 
and the problem they present is a difficult 
one to solve. 



CHAPTER XVI 

IN WHICH I FIRST VISIT THE BOWERY 
MISSION 

"After one of these strike-breaking 
jobs which had netted me a considerable 
sum of money, I returned to New York 
and began to spend it. It proved to be 
my most fearful debauch. It lasted for 
many days during all of which time I was 
a 'good fellow.' If you've got a dollar to 
spend you're a good fellow down there 
but when you've got a 'roll to blow' you 
meet scores of 'friends' you've never seen 
before. They come and go with the 'roll' 
like wolves with the stray sheep. I came 
to my senses finally, alone and penniless, 
in a back alley- way. I had a hazy f eeling 

117 



118 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

that I hadn't spent or gambled all the 
money I'd started in with the night before. 
I was sick, too, which added to my suspi- 
cions that my 'roll' had been 'lifted.' Some 
one had reached me! 

"A man in the condition I was in that 
morning needs, if ever he needs it, a good 
stiff drink. It quiets him and if he can't 
get it he is liable to go clean crazy. Men 
like that are given a drink and at longer 
and longer intervals other drinks. Other- 
wise they would injure themselves or 
others. Somebody gave me a 'hooker.' It 
pulled me together a bit. And then a 
bartender where I had dropped a 'bunch' 
a few nights earlier gave me another. 

"Suddenly I thought of my wife and 
then I remembered that I hadn't paid her 
a visit in a long time. Probably she had 
a few dollars saved. I needed money 
badly. What was my wife for, if not to 
take care of me? So I looked her up. 



I VISIT THE BOWERY MISSION 119 

She was in desperate straits. Ill from 
worry and lack of proper food and days 
and days of fruitless searching for work 
— for any sort of work that would bring 
the price of a loaf of bread and a bottle of 
milk. 

"Did my heart melt? Did I get down 
on my knees and ask forgiveness? 

"In a moment of madness, after learn- 
ing that she had no money to give me, I 
left her without so much as a good-bye! 

"How I got back to the Bowery I don't 
know. I was blind with rage and the 
effects of booze — sore clear through with 
anger and hate. I hated myself. I hated 
my wife. I hated the world. I must have 
money! I must have money! This kept 
ringing in my ears! 

"And then I lay down and slept. It 
was a long time before I awoke and when 
I did I found myself in an empty wagon 
in an alley. 



120 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

"I was sober now — sober but sick. Not 
too sick, however, to begin new plans for 
money — money for drink, money for gam- 
bling. If I could pick one winner I could 
get a start and with a start, even if it was 
only a small one, I could beat the book- 
makers. I knew it! I was surer of it 
then than ever before. 

"I thought and planned with wits born 
of desperation, for somehow or other I felt 
this was pretty near my last fling. But I 
couldn't arrive anywhere. I couldn't see 
a start. I thought and thought but only 
in circles! I couldn't do anything alone. 
Alone? Why need I try alone? Hadn't 
I a wife? What was a wife for if not to 
help me and care for me? Hadn't she 
always done it? Wouldn't she continue 
to do it? I knew her well enough to know 
she would! 

"I don't know what put the idea of 
writing to her in my mind. But that's 



I VISIT THE BOWERY MISSION 121 

what I decided to do. I hadn't done it, 
mind you, in years. I had no writing ma- 
terials nor a stamp. It was early in the 
morning and I could borrow what I 
needed, maybe, from a bartender, so off I 
went. On the way I met an acquaintance 
and told him what I wanted. He couldn't 
help me himself but he told me that if I 
would go up to the Bowery Mission, up 
near Rivington Street, and tell them I 
wanted to write to my wife — that I 
wanted to go home and be good to her 
again — they would give me the materials 
and a place at which to write. 

"I turned in my tracks and headed for 
the Bowery Mission. 

"I want you to get clearly in mind the 
mental state I was in and the purpose of 
my errand. I was on my way again to 
make my poor wife 'produce.' Remem- 
ber my physical condition — it had been 
wrecked by booze and wrong living. I 



122 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

was a scoffer and a jeerer at everything 
that savoured of religion. I didn't be- 
lieve there was a square man in the world. 
I would have thought no more of killing a 
man than of laughing at one. In reform 
schools and prisons I had been told of 
brotherly love one hour a week by a paid 
chaplain, while I was being beaten on my 
bare back, strung up by my thumbs, or 
confined in a dark, damp dungeon during 
the rest of the week by other paid state 
officials. Why should I have believed that 
this one state employe — the chaplain — 
should be on the level any more than the 
others? 

"To me a man with religion was a 'bug,' 
a 'nut,' or a 'molly coddle.' I could stand 
for anything but that! But if I could get 
what I wanted at this Mission I'd be a 
fool not to go. 

"I stood outside looking at the joint 
and laughing to myself. A bunch of 



I VISIT THE BOWERY MISSION 123 

suckers, I called them. They were Mis- 
sion Stiffs, I thought. Somebody was 
putting up the dough — some cracked old 
nut — and those fellows down here were 
getting away with it good and soft. I'd 
put one over on them. 

"I went upstairs along with other men. 
It was very clean, much cleaner than any- 
thing I'd seen in a long time. At the top 
of the stairs was a large room with a lot 
of poor fellows sitting around. A young 
lad came out of an office and said: 

" 'Good morning, what can I do for 
you?' I told him, and he pointed to a 
chair which he told me to take and he'd 
talk with me in a few minutes. Things 
were going all right I thought. I hadn't 
met as easy a bunch to work in a long time. 
It was like taking candy from a child. 
The warmth of the coal stove felt good 
too. It was a cinch ! 

"But the young fellow who was coming 



124 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

right back didn't come and I began to get 
leery and then I got sore! I was about to 
start something to show them I was wise 
when I felt a hand on my shoulder. 

"They'd pulled a trick on me! I was 
pinched. I knew all the time these fellows 
with religion were crooked! I wanted to 
make a break and beat it when I heard a 
voice behind me, a soft, kindly voice: 

" 'Do you want a job?' 

"I looked up and there stood a little old 
fellow with ruddy cheeks, dressed in a neat 
business suit, and I knew he must be one 
of those in authority. 

"I looked about the room again. There 
were certainly twenty other men there do- 
ing as I was doing — waiting. .Why had I 
been asked that question ahead of all the 
others? What was this fellow trying to 
hand me — something 'queer'? I didn't 
owe him anything — why should he want 
to do anything for me? He'd never seen 



I VISIT THE BOWERY MISSION 125 

me before and after I'd gotten what I 
came for he'd never see me again. I could 
have promised him that. What did he 
think I was? I looked at him again and 
he smiled as he repeated the question. 
" 'Do you want a day's work?' 
"Before I realised what I was doing I'd 
said 'Yes.' It slipped out before I knew 
it. I didn't even say 'Sir' or 'Thank you.' 
Work! What did I want with work? 
How much honest work had I ever done? 
And then an idea flashed across my mind. 
I'd look the ground over; maybe I'd find 
a chance to get next to something. Maybe 
this job might help me to the coin I was 
after. 

"They asked me my name and a few 
other questions and entered the informa- 
tion in a book of register. A card was 
given me introducing me to the firm to 
whom I was being sent, together with five 
cents for carfare. 



126 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

"I was on my way to work! I went 
down stairs in a stupor. I remember how 
I laughed at myself for having been in a 
Mission and how I had fooled them. I've 
seen lots of other men since who thought 
they'd fooled the Mission when in reality 
they were the ones who were fooled, only 
they didn't know it at the time any more 
than I did. 



CHAPTER XVII 

HARD MANUAL LABOUR — A NEW 
SENSATION 

"The address on the card read Seventh 
Avenue near Seventeenth Street. They 
had wanted help of a temporary sort, to 
carry lumber, and so they had telephoned 
the Free Labour Bureau of the Bowery 
Mission. And because I was a big- framed 
and strong-looking man, Charley Thomp- 
son (I learned his name on my way down 
stairs) had asked me if I wanted work. 

"Here I was at the place and here was 
the lumber — a big pile of it. It was noon- 
time and it certainly didn't look like the 
picking was going to be good for only 
labouring men were to be seen. Surely 

127 



128 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

carrying that lumber all day was going to 
be no picnic. I was looking for something 
soft. All this makes it very difficult for 
me to understand why I took off my coat 
and with rolled-up sleeves went to work. 
It proved even harder than I thought it 
would but I kept on and was glad when 
the whistle blew at quitting time. The 
nickel for carfare I'd saved, for I knew it 
would buy me two early morning drinks 
and get me a place of shelter. That morn- 
ing before I'd left the Mission I'd prom- 
ised Charley Thompson that I'd come in 
to the service that night. I kept thinking 
about it all day. I'd made that promise 
like I'd made hundreds of similar ones 
to my wife — with not the slightest idea of 
ever making good. Every promise I'd 
ever made her I'd forgotten at once. But 
I kept thinking all day of my promise to 
that Mission Stiff! 

"You know I was about as wise as they 



A NEW SENSATION 129 

came, or I thought I was. Nobody could 
ever teach me anything. I had to be 
shown and that about a dozen times. I 
was 'from Missouri' if ever a man was. 
I was suspicious of everything and every- 
body. A thing I couldn't understand was 
'phoney' and a good thing to keep away 
from. I loathed everything churchy and 
all connected therewith were crooked. I 
tell you all this in repetition because you 
meet so many 'cons.' I wish every con- 
vict in the country could know my story. 
I believe it would make their 'come back 
path' look brighter and easier to travel. 

"When I quit work at 5:15 I was 
almost done up. My back ached and my 
arms ached. Ached like they'd never 
ached before. I was hungry as a bear. I 
could hardly wait to reach a meal. Sev- 
enty-five cents they had paid me and they 
told me that I could have another day's 
work if I wanted it. Yes, I wanted it, and 



130 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

told them I'd show up. Work started at 
seven-thirty. I laughed at myself when I 
thought of it. Me at work at 7:30 carry- 
ing lumber. 

"A heavy meal for fifteen cents made 
me feel a lot better. When before had I 
gone practically a whole day without a 
drink? It seemed like a year when I 
thought of it. My throat was cracking 
open for one. The price was in my pocket. 
It was there before my dinner and yet I'd 
gone by three saloons before I reached the 
restaurant. How do you account for it? 
I hadn't done a thing like that in years. 

"On my way from dinner to the Bowery 
were at least fifty saloons. I entered only 
one and ordered and drank only two slugs 
— whiskeys. Mind you, I wasn't trying 
to quit the stuff, yet the fact remains that 
I only had two drinks. The previous 
night I'd 'a' stayed till the eighty cents 



A NEW SENSATION 131 

was gone. Then, however, I spent just 
ten cents. 

"Tell me, if you can, what took me to 
the service at the Mission that night? 
What made me keep my promise to 
Charley Thompson? I'd made my wife a 
thousand promises which were no sooner 
made than forgotten. Why did I keep 
my first promise to a stranger? At any 
rate, when the doors opened at seven, 
there I was, well up in the line. It was 
just the time when usually I was getting 
'tanked up' down the street. I thought 
of that but decided to stay and see what 
kind of a show they ran. And it was some 
show, believe me ! I don't remember ever 
being so interested and amused in my life. 
But I simply couldn't understand it. I 
thought the men were plum crazy as one 
after another they stood up and gave their 
testimony. One had been a thief, he said, 
and later a down-and-out, but had lost all 



lm THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

of it since he'd given his heart to God. I 
thought some one had tipped him off 
about me and he was taking a chance on 
ringing me in as one of that bunch of old 
women! I was sure every man who spoke 
was paid for doing it. Surely no man in 
his right senses would get up and do it 
for nothing. They all, every one of them, 
talked about the same thing — Brotherly 
Love ! Brotherly Love be hanged ! How 
far would that stuff take me ? What did 
I want with love? Love was meant for 
women — not men. Whiskey was good 
enough for me! 

"At any rate I stuck the meeting out 
although I was disgusted long before it 
was over. Along with all the rest, some 
three hundred, I filed down stairs where 
we all got a hand-out — coffee and a big 
fresh roll. Again and again I asked my- 
self what it all meant. It cost money — 
300 rolls and 300 cups of coffee, 365 times 



A NEW SENSATION 133 

a year. I spoke to a lad near me about it, 
and he said that from Thanksgiving to 
Easter, at one o'clock in the morning, the 
Mission ran a bread line where they fed 
upwards of a thousand men. That cost a 
lot more! And then I remembered the 
Labour Bureau away up stairs. That cost 
more money! They didn't charge me a 
cent for the job they got for me. You 
know I didn't know anything about the 
Settlement in the Bronx or the Mother 
Bird Memorial Farm up in the Croton 
Lake watershed. 

"As I went up out of the breakfast room 
to the street I decided I'd come in again 
the next night and see the show all over 
again. I told Thompson I would. They 
certainly were a soft-shelled bunch. I 
ought to be able to make it worth my 
while. 

"Sleep came quickly when I got to bed. 
The day's work had exhausted me. I 



134 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

went straight to my 'pad' without a drink. 
I felt no wish for a drink or I would have 
had one, you may be sure of that. It was 
probably due to the fact that I'd been 
drinking very heavily the previous few 
days and after a hard drink a fellow's 
system sometimes rebels at booze. But if 
that's what kept me going that day and 
night with only two drinks it was the first 
time it had ever happened. 

"I don't say what did it. I'm simply 
telling you facts. 

"The following day, my second at the 
lumber pile, was twice as long as the first, 
twice as hard, and twice as profitable — 
profitable to the tune of $1.50. And most 
of the previous day's pay remained in my 
pocket. Not a drink all day! Not one 
desire to steal! Another new sensation, 
that I thought about a lot and couldn't 
understand. All day I asked myself if 
I'd go to the Mission that night. Al- 



A NEW SENSATION 135 

though I'd promised Thompson I would, 
about quitting time I decided not to. An- 
other fifteen-cent meal and a good stiff 
hooker of whiskey and I felt good. I 
wanted it and I bought it. I wanted an- 
other and I bought that too. If I'd wanted 
more, like I had for years, I'd 'a' bought 
them too. But I didn't. Two whole days 
and not a drink, — two nights and two 
drinks each. I was getting too good. I 
remember it made me feel like an old wom- 
an. I laughed at myself. 

"But it made me think. And the more 
I thought the more puzzled I became. As 
I walked downtown I lost myself com- 
pletely, so wrapped up was I in my own 
thoughts. After a while I woke up. I 
had stopped in my tracks and was directly 
in front of the wide-open doors of the 
Bowery Mission, the place where I didn't 
want to go. Curiosity got the better of me 
again. I'd go in and see the show. It was 



136 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

the middle of October, chilly, and I had 
no coat. Inside the Mission it was warm 
and there would be hot coffee and rolls. 
In I went! 

"But I was wise and by the time the 
service was over I'd doped the whole thing 
out. Those men were bluffers. There 
was no other answer. Certainly no sane 
man would get up in a crowded public 
place and tell the bunch how many jobs 
he'd pulled off and how religion had saved 
him. That wasn't in the cards — they were 
fakers ! I knew human nature and I knew 
that kind of stuff didn't go along with it. 
All this was side-show stuff. And I knew 
it paid well too. Oh! I knew it all in 
those days. 

"There was another day's work for me 
at the lumber pile. I was tired. I needed 
the next day's pay, and if I wasn't on the 
job early and able to work with the rest 
of the crew I'd lose out. So another night 



A NEW SENSATION 137 

I went to bed sober, this time without 
even one drink. 

"Charley Thompson had told me to be 
sure and be on hand the next night for the 
Superintendent of the Mission, Dr. Halli- 
mond, would be there and he wanted me to 
meet him. I said I would come and this 
time I meant it good and proper. If there 
was any easy money to be had out of the 
joint the man to get it from was the Boss. 
I'd make Dr. Hallimond fall for me all 
right. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

I JOIN THE BROTHERHOOD AND MEET DR. 
HALLIMOND 

"I was dead set on meeting that Super- 
intendent and I figured the best and easi- 
est way to do it was to take a card and join 
the Brotherhood. After a fellow does that 
he meets the whole bunch and gets a 
chance to mix it up with them a bit. And 
so I decided to take a card that night. 

"At the end of the meeting a couple of 
fellows came down the aisle, just like we 
do now, handing out the blank member- 
ship cards to all who would take one. I 
was wondering how many of the down-and- 
outs in the nearby seats would see me and 
laugh at me. I lost my nerve completely 

138 



I MEET DR. HALLIMOND 139 

when the man reached me, and made no 
effort to get a card. But he stopped 
squarely at my side, stuck a card in my 
hands and said: 

" 'Take it any way! It can't do you 
any harm.' I grabbed it eagerly. Here 
at last was a direct way to reach a man 
who had money to hand out to the likes of 
me and I was the boy to get it. But I got 
fooled that night good and proper ! Like 
now, they made you hold the card over 
night, ponder over it, and turn it in the 
second night. That meant I'd have to 
come in again. All right, the game was 
worth it. 

"I was wise enough to know that it 
wouldn't do to have a 'stew' on or a 'hang- 
over' on when I met Dr. Hallimond, and 
as I was tired out I again went straight to 
bed, the third consecutive night, dead 
sober. I had almost three dollars in my 
pocket too. 



140 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

"For a long time I lay awake — think- 
ing, and if you guessed till doomsday you 
wouldn't hit on what I was thinking about 
— that third night at the Mission. There 
had been a man on the platform who told 
us all what a raw run for her money he'd 
given his wife! He told us how he had 
mistreated her, and dishonoured her. But 
say, he was a piker alongside of me and 
the deal I'd given my wife. I couldn't 
help comparing the two of us as he spoke. 
And then he told us that it all had changed 
since he had come to the Mission ! He told 
us that Love had done it. He told us how 
faithful his wife had been to him all the 
time he had been unfaithful to her. He 
talked like that for half an hour. 

"For a long time I lay awake, as I say, 
thinking of that man and his story. I 
knew his wife couldn't have been treated 
worse than mine had been or for a 
longer time, and I knew too that she 



I MEET DR. HALLIMOND 141 

hadn't or couldn't have been more loyal 
than Jane had been. 

"Suddenly something happened in my 
head. Then and there, in that dirty, filthy 
bed on the Bowery, I felt for the first time 
a feeling of remorse and shame. That's 
the truth. It was the first time in my life 
that I'd ever regretted anything I'd ever 
done. 

"That man and his wife and his story 
kept ringing in my ears and flashing be- 
fore my eyes ! At last the crust of sin or 
rust or mildew, or whatever it was in which 
my conscience had been buried for years 
and years, was pricked. A tiny, tiny bit 
of light got in. And I cried. 

"Sleep of a fitful sort at last overtook 
me but not before I'd realised that per- 
haps during all those years of her faithful- 
ness I had unconsciously allowed to grow 
up within me something akin to love for 
that brave little woman. And now that 



142 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

something was trying to dig its way out, 
to find expression. And then, just as 
sleep was carrying me off, I made up my 
mind by all that was good and holy to do 
better by her and to start next day. 



CHAPTER XIX 



OUT OF WORK 



"I finished that pile of lumber the fol- 
lowing day — there was to be no more work 
at the factory. Why didn't it last and last 
and last forever? Why did that break 
come just then? Why was I put to the 
test so soon? Why couldn't it have come 
later when I was more nearly on my feet? 

"Not a drink all day nor one at supper! 
I took a seat at the Mission, as far up 
front as I could get, and I held my card, 
already signed, in my hand. 

"A fellow sitting beside me told me to 
turn it in because it was good for a bed 
that night. I nodded to him to let him 
know I was wise, but I didn't speak. I 

143 



144 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

was thinking of Jane and the great wrong 
I had done her. The words of the man 
who had spoken of his wife the night be- 
fore kept ringing through my head. 

"The meeting was over. Charley 
Balevre stepped up and greeted me 
kindly. Shook hands with me just like he 
meant it. As we walked upstairs to the 
Brotherhood Room he talked to me in a 
kindly, interested way about my work, 
and all the time he had hold of my arm. 
It was a little thing to do but it made a 
deep impression on me and so long as I 
live I'll never forget it. You see, even 
though I didn't know it, something was 
going on within me, something good was 
going on. The tiny little bit of light of 
the night before was holding its own — was 
still aglow. 

"The room upstairs held a couple of 
dozen fellows seated here and there in a 
free and easy manner. Their ease was at 



OUT OF WORK 145 

once apparent to me. They were listen- 
ing to a big, broad-shouldered, hearty- 
faced Englishman. It was Dr. Halli- 
mond, the man I wanted to meet and beat. 
He had the kindliest and most sympa- 
thetic look I'd ever seen. At once I felt 
here was a man who was different! He 
came right over to me ( I was a newcomer) 
and shook my hand in a hearty, genuine 
way that made my blood tingle. He said 
he was glad to see me. And he was! 
He's always glad to meet any one in 
need. He's been glad for thirty-five 
years, doing that same thing all the time ! 
"Then Charley Balevre gave me my 
card of membership in the Brotherhood 
and he gave me also a pocket edition of 
the New Testament. It was with a 
sneaky, low-down feeling that I put it in 
my pocket. I didn't open it for fear I'd 
expose my ignorance of it and my con- 
tempt for it. Pretty soon we had a quiet 



146 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

off -to-one-side chat. Dr. Hallimond 
asked me a great many questions about 
myself and what I was doing and had been 
doing. He didn't ask me one embarrass- 
ing question. He branched off when he 
found he was on that track. He didn't 
scold me or lecture me, despite the fact 
that I told him some pretty straight stuff. 

"All the time he was talking to me I 
kept thinking of my purpose in meeting 
him, and the more I thought of it the more 
I thought what a good fellow he was! 
Try as I would though, I couldn't under- 
stand him or why he treated me as he did, 
and no doubt all the others who came to 
him. As he rose to indicate to me that he 
had other things to do he put his hand on 
my shoulder and asked me if there was 
anything he could do for me. 

"Here then was what I was looking for 
— an opportunity to get next — to do him 
— to put one over on him. The chance had 



OUT OF WORK 147 

come without the least effort on my part. 
He had broached the subject of his own 
accord. And on the tip of my tongue was 
a story waiting for him. The same kind 
of a story that had made many, many 
people come across whenever I'd sprung 
it. It was to be an easy victory. 

"But the story remained on the tip of 
my tongue. It's there now! It's never 
been told! It's dead there! It died that 
night as I looked him in the face and re- 
plied that there was nothing I wanted of 
him. 

"For the life of me I couldn't hand him 
the stuff — he was too kind — too good a 
fellow. I recognised it as kindness. It all 
dawned on me in a heap at that moment. 
For the first time in my life I felt I'd met 
up with an honest man — a man who was 
exactly what he professed to be. 

"I went to bed that night without a 
drink, nor did I have the least desire for 



148 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

it. Not a drink all day* not one at night. 
I awoke early in the morning feeling 
strong and well and eager for work — for 
honest work of which there was none I 
could go to. Eager for work — me — the 
man I had been. That sounds strange I 
guess, but it's the truth. The factory was 
closed to me. The pile of lumber had 
gone. I'd carried it away. I'd been 
working four days and hadn't been drunk. 
In my pocket were a few hard and hon- 
estly earned dollars. In my heart was the 
first good thought that had ever been 
there. My wife's face with those drawn, 
pinched lines of hardship and sorrow ap- 
peared and reappeared to me all morning 
as I searched unsuccessfully up and down, 
here and there, for work. My new found 
hope and courage held all day but it was a 
fight. I didn't eat all day. With no work 
in sight there wasn't enough coin to spare 
for food. I was dreadfully tired from 



OUT OF WORK 149 

walking and my strength hadn't been 
helped any by fasting. The seats in the 
Mission, hard as they were, rested me, and 
the service, to a certain extent, had given 
me new courage. The only food I ate in 
those twenty-four hours was the Mission 
roll and cup of coffee at ten that night. 



CHAPTER XX 



IN WHICH I FALL 



"The next day and the next and the 
next brought me no work. Everywhere 
I went I was turned down cold. I didn't 
know how to apply for a job. Allowing 
for bed money and one meal a day my 
funds were good only for two days more. 

"I kept out of my old haunts. I knew 
the necessity of that. Consequently I was 
very much surprised on meeting one of 
my former pals way off his usual beat — 
up above Cooper Square! He hailed me 
and put me wise to a 'busting' job. The 
employes of the American Locomotive 
Works at Schenectady, New York, were 
out on strike and the Pinkertons had the 

150 



IN WHICH I FALL 151 

work. I grabbed the tip eagerly and went 
after the job. I knew it would be an in- 
side one and there would be no booze. In 
a 'busting' job like that they take the scab 
help, put them in the plant, and lock the 
doors. That's done to keep the scabs in- 
side all the time and the strikers outside 
all the time. We slept on cots the firm 
provided. I got the job easily and the pay 
was four dollars a day — a fortune. There 
was nothing to spend for board or lodg- 
ing. I saw visions of a little home. I'd 
get a little place somewhere in a neigh- 
bourhood where I was unknown. I'd take 
Jane there : we'd begin all over again and 
I'd be a good, kind husband to her. I be- 
lieve I was happy on that job. 

"It was then that I first took from my 
pocket the New Testament I carried. I 
read it, portions of it carefully, but I 
couldn't understand it, couldn't even make 
heads or tails out of it. It failed to make 



152 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

the slightest impression on me and yet I 
read and read again certain portions. If 
it hadn't been for my size and apparent 
strength the bunch would have had a lot 
of fun over it and over me, for they were 
a hard lot. They didn't like the way my 
sails were cut, so they kept quiet. One 
fellow, though, with whom I became quite 
friendly, told me he always thought he'd 
seen everything there was to see until he 
saw my Bible on a 'busting' job. It was 
a new one to him and I admitted it was to 
me as well. 

"At the end of my first week I went to 
the boss and drew fifteen dollars against 
my pay. If you guessed for a week you'd 
fail on hitting on my object. I sent it to 
Jane! And as that money order left 
Schenectady for Brooklyn I experienced 
the most glorious sensation of my whole 
rotten life. I'd never felt so good before. 
Unconsciously I pushed out my chest, 



IN WHICH I FALL 153 

lifted up my head and looked my fellows 
in the eyes. Pride filled my heart and 
tears filled my eyes as I thought how 
proud and happy it would make Jane. 

"That tiny little bit of light was still 
aglow within me. It had succeeded in 
breaking out. It had manifested itself 
to the world. 

"The job lasted four weeks, and at the 
end of that time I received my money less 
the fifteen. It was a good sized roll for 
me and I felt rich. Some years before it 
wouldn't have been a consequence. How- 
ever I bid the plant good-bye reluctantly 
and, together with about a dozen more of 
the 'busters,' began the trip down the 
Hudson by boat on the Night Line. No 
sooner were we aboard than the gang be- 
gan to loosen up. Every one of us had 
plenty of money and the boat carried 
plenty to drink of every description. I 
knew trouble was brewing and I decided 



154 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

to quit the gang. I remember I thought 
I'd walk uptown. Then I woke up. I 
was on a boat and couldn't get away. I'd 
have to stay right there and fight it out 
on the spot. I went out on deck and 
walked away, firm in my determination 
to let the stuff alone, come what might. 
Around and around the deck I went. 
Each time I passed the entrance to the 
bar. Each time I passed it I felt stronger 
and better able to hold tight to my reso- 
lution. Each time I passed it I could 
look in at the door and see my friends 
crowded in front of the bar. At last I was 
beating rum. But all the same the fight 
was a bitter one. Several times I was on 
the verge of going in to have 'just one.' 
For two hours the game went on like that 
and then just as I passed the bar entrance 
out lurched one of the gang drunk as a 
lord and smelling like a distillery. He 
flopped right into my arms and invited me 



IN WHICH I FALL 155 

to come in and "ave a smile.' That invita- 
tion in itself didn't faze me a particle, but 
the smell of the fellow's breath was too 
much. It was like a red flag in front of a 
bull. My blood turned cold and then hot. 
My system was on fire. I could have won 
that fight, I'm sure, if it hadn't been for 
the smell of the booze. 

"I joined the gang and got beastly 
drunk. The stuff made me crazy and I 
didn't draw a sober breath until all of my 
e rolT had been 'blowed' — about two weeks 
later. And before I had time to get thor- 
oughly sober there was a strike in the 
Street Cleaning Department. Wadell 
and Mahon had the job and I got a slice 
of it. Another long booze ended only 
when the coin ended. 

"It's a curious thing that from my last 
day at the lumber pile, which you will re- 
member was a month or more earlier, I 
hadn't once been tempted to do any steal- 



156 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

ing, and not having been tempted I didn't 
steal. I can't account for it, but it's a 
fact. However, the desire came back 
strong after that big drunk following the 
Street Cleaning strike. When the time 
came that I had sobered up, a feeling of 
utter hopelessness came over me and I 
gave up the fight. I figured I could never 
get back with my wife. For the first time 
in my life I admitted to myself that I was 
a failure. My feeling of shame and re- 
morse and sorrow was so bitter I gave up 
the fight — I quit 'cold.' I'd get a new 
'roll' — I'd find a sucker and then I'd beat 
it for good and all. 

"I was in the back room of a saloon 
when I reached this decision. I planned a 
Western trip. Things were easier out 
there. Just then a strange thing hap- 
pened. Like the day they'd taken me, 
hand-cuffed to Sing Sing, the big events 
in my life passed in review before my 



IN WHICH I FALL 157 

eyes. One by one I saw them. One by 
one they failed to move me — until last — 
like the first time — came the picture of 
my wife. This time, though, I first saw 
her as she had been when I married her, 
young, full of health and happy, and then 
I saw her as she looked the last time I'd 
seen her. Instantly my blood became 
afire — it boiled in anger and resentment 
against myself. I was all on edge and 
there in that back room I cursed myself 
over and over again. 

"And then I quieted down. A new pic- 
ture was before my eyes. I couldn't be- 
lieve it, but there it was flashing ever 
brighter before me. It showed me stand- 
ing in a room with a lot of men — men like 
myself — failures. A big man with a 
kindly face had his hand on my shoulder 
and was asking me if he could do any- 
thing for me! 

"With a start that shook me to the very 



158 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

foundation I realised that I needed that 
man right then. I knew it! At once I 
left the gin mill and went uptown. En- 
tering the Bowery Mission, I asked for 
Dr. Hallimond. 

"He was confined to his home — slightly 
ill. 

"I felt all in — heart-broken — ready to 
give up again. I wished I might die. 
As I was about to go downstairs and out 
on the street Charley Balevre spied me 
and remembered me, not as John Goode, 
but as a man who had some time earlier 
taken a card, and then had dropped out 
of sight. He came right over to me with 
out-stretched hand. He urged me to stay 
for the service and to come in regularly. 
He told me to come every day to the 
Labour Bureau and he would try and fix 
me up with enough work to keep me go- 
ing until something permanent came 
along. 



IN WHICH I FALL 159 

"God is good! He spoke to me that 
night if ever he spoke to any one. I see 
it clearly as I look back on it now. My 
disgust with myself and my regret at 
failing to see Dr. Hallimond were suffi- 
cient to have driven me to anything. 
Charley Balevre saved the day: he said 
just what I needed to hear and he did it 
just as Dr. Hallimond would have done 
it. 

"I went downstairs meekly and broken 
in spirit. I sang the hymns as I'd never 
sung them before and received great com- 
fort and easement of mind from the serv- 
ice ! They gave me a bed ticket and I was 
glad to take it for I wanted to be alone 
where I could think! 

"Each day I went to the Labour Bu- 
reau and each day met the same kind 
treatment. This business of being kind 
to others began to soak in and the deeper 
it went the more ashamed of myself I be- 



160 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

came. You see I didn't associate my emo- 
tions with any phase of religion; if I had 
I'd probably 'a' quit — all I had in mind 
was Jane and a square deal for her. 
What these men did for me touched me 
deeply, but I couldn't figure it out. Here 
they were, total strangers to me, falling 
over one another to do me kindnesses. 
What had ever I done to deserve it? How 
had I treated those with whom I'd been 
thrown in contact? Finally I got to the 
point where I admitted to myself that 
there must be something real and tangible 
back of it all. When I arrived at that 
point I'd taken my second big step for- 
ward — out of darkness — into light. I 
realised then that this constant kindness 
to every one stood for something definite. 
The men on the platform all said it stood 
for God! 

"My third big stride ahead came next. 
If that was what God stood for — kindness 



IN WHICH I FALL 161 

— then I wanted God and I'd get God. 
From that moment on I was as serious as 
I could be, about that God business. I 
didn't understand it but I wanted to, and 
so I tried to do as they all did and I tried 
to pray. I was imitating instead of be- 
lieving, so there was nothing doing. 



CHAPTER XXI 

IN WHICH I SUFFER AS NEVER BEFORE 

"The next day an impulse overtook me 
which I tried hard to shake off. I wanted 
to go and see Jane. And yet I didn't 
want to go. I thought I ought to wait a 
little until I was surer of myself. But the 
idea wouldn't down and over I went. 

"She was living then at her brother's 
home in Brooklyn. He had little use for 
me — justly — and I had as little use for 
him — just as justly. I found Jane with 
strength and courage gone. Her sister 
had just passed beyond into 'the other 
room' after a long and trying illness, dur- 
ing all of which time Jane in her already 
enfeebled condition had nursed her ten- 

162 



I SUFFER AS NEVER BEFORE 163 

derly day and night. Poor little woman, 
she was indeed in a sorry plight. I never 
wanted to do anything so badly as I 
wanted to tell her about the Bowery Mis- 
sion and what it was doing for me. Yes ! 
and about what it had done for me. But 
I didn J t. I thought it best to wait. I'd 
disappointed her so bitterly so many times 
that I preferred to wait and not run any 
chances of doing it again. But, oh! how 
my heart ached for her as I sat by her bed- 
side! How I longed to do for her! I 
stood it as long as I could and, taking her 
in my arms, embraced her as I should 
have done seventeen years before but had 
failed to do. And then I left her. 

"As I passed out of the house into the 
street a great surging impulse stirred me : 
moved me like I'd never been moved be- 
fore. I stood still in my tracks, closed 
my eyes and offered up to Heaven this 
silent prayer: 



164 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

" 'Oh! God, if you're what they say you 
are over there in the Mission, give me the 
help I need — make me a good husband to 
my wife!' 

"It was the first prayer I'd ever said. 
It was offered with all my heart and it 
brought me instant relief. I felt soothed 
and comforted and I walked with a lighter 
step and a braver heart. In that prayer I 
asked for all I thought I needed. But I 
needed lots else to make me a man. 

"Without having had a mouthful of 
food all day I went to the Mission that 
evening. I'd walked to and from Brook- 
lyn besides tramping around looking for 
work. I was exhausted. The music 
cheered me and I listened attentively to 
the men who testified to what good the 
Mission did them and to all God had done 
for them and was doing each day they 
continued to serve Him. I didn't laugh 
once that night! I tried as hard as I 



I SUFFER AS NEVER BEFORE 165 

could to make it all seem real to me like 
it did to the speakers. And when they 
asked for requests for prayer I stood up 
and asked them to pray for me ! 

"Surely, surely I was making headway, 
and as soon as I sat down I realised it. I 
didn't feel ashamed — simply strange. 
And I left the service greatly strength- 
ened physically by the coffee and rolls. 

"Then began the period of most in- 
tense mental and physical suffering I ever 
went through. I'd had a hard life and 
had suffered all sorts of hardships but 
they were child's play alongside of my 
experiences until the following May — a 
period of about six months. 

"I'd been one of twenty-five selected by 
Charley Balevre to form a Bible Class to 
meet with Dr. Hallimond on Wednesday 
nights for an hour prior to the big service 
in the Mission. I was very proud of the 
chance, although it didn't mean very much 



166 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

to me, but I made up my mind to fight 
my battle to a finish. 

"It was January and a bitter cold one 
at that. I don't think I possessed as much 
as seven pounds of clothing including my 
shoes. Both of them were nearly gone 
and I had no overcoat. I had neither 
work nor money. I went over the whole 
situation carefully and made up my mind 
that unless it was absolutely necessary 
I'd accept no favours from any one at 
the Mission except, of course, work. And 
I was the same man who only a little 
while before had gone there to do them 
up ! Such is the power of the religion of 
Jesus Christ — that's what they were tam- 
ing me with. 

"For days and days from ten till four I 
sat in the Labour Bureau sharing with 
my comrades the scanty calls for work 
that came in over the phone and by mail. 
I grabbed a ten-cent errand like I used to 



I SUFFER AS NEVER BEFORE 167 

grab a thousand dollar roll. I tackled 
everything they offered me. There were 
days and days during which I didn't get 
a mouthful to eat except the roll and cof- 
fee at the Mission about ten o'clock, then 
one on the Bread Line at one o'clock. 
Night after night in almost zero weather 
I 'carried the banner' without an over- 
coat and with the poorest kind of broken 
shoes. Cold? Cold? Say, man, all you 
know about cold is how it's spelled! I've 
been so cold on some of those nights I 
didn't know where I was walking or even 
that I was walking. I got so cold I didn't 
know it was cold! And then how I suf- 
fered after sun-up on a warm grating over 
a bakery where I drank in the savoury 
odour of freshly baked bread! You've 
walked a mile maybe in zero weather, on a 
good big breakfast and before a hearty 
meat dinner while you were warmly clad. 
Well I know what it means to walk in 



168 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

that weather all night for seven consecu- 
tive nights, scantily clad and not tasting 
one morsel of meat or fat in all that time. 
And what I got at the Mission taught me 
how to do that little stunt without com- 
plaining and without making a touch! 
Don't you call that a result? Do you 
think I did it for fun? I did it because I 
wanted God and I couldn't get God un- 
less I was on the level. Not once in that 
six months did I enter a saloon or touch a 
drop of beer or liquor or wine ! Not once 
in that six months was I profane ! 

"One day while sitting in the Labour 
Bureau — half starved, helpless, almost 
hopeless and despairing of ever making 
good, I wondered whether it was worth 
while to go on. There were about eighty 
of us sitting about, and there wouldn't 
be eighty or forty or thirty jobs come 
in that day. There wasn't a chance in 
the world of my making so much as ten 



I SUFFER AS NEVER BEFORE 169 

cents. Another night must I walk and 
walk and walk those icy, friendless streets 
till daylight. You couldn't stop or you'd 
die of exposure. I was on the verge of 
throwing up the sponge. God above 
knows how I was tempted, but I didn't 
yield. I sat still and grit my teeth. And 
then in the midst of my despair and dis- 
couragement in walked Charley Balevre. 
He must have read my face, for over he 
came and asked how things were going. 
Before I had time to answer he slipped a 
dollar bill into my hand and left me stand- 
ing there. It was a gracious act and it 
came at a time when something unusual 
was needed to save the day. Never before 
or since has anything so strengthened me 
and put heart in me. A single, simple 
act! He had seen my desperate need. 
My soul cried to Heaven in thanks! I 
could sleep on a 'pad' again ! I could have 
a piece of meat again! I could take off 



170 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

my clothes that night and have a warm 
bath. Do you wonder such thoughts 
made me feel good? 

"On my way to a lodging house that 
night to rent a 'pad' I was told that the 
Holy Name Mission was to remain open 
all night because of the cold! In I went 
and also the four following nights — five 
nights of delightful, refreshing sleep, 
even though it came on a hard, wooden 
bench with my clothes on! 

"Does God help a man 'come back' 
while the man is on the level? Let's see! I 
was fighting hard. That January was the 
toughest of my life but I kept on right up 
to the verge of the breaking point. Then 
came that dollar bill! Then five nights 
of warm, restful sleep! And then the 
Mission gave me a job with board and a 
place to sleep in the Memorial House — a 
place they maintained where some of their 
converts lived! I was to tend door and 



I SUFFER AS NEVER BEFORE 171 

the salary was one dollar a week. Every- 
man in the house was living right and 
thinking right. I was thrown into inti- 
mate relation with these fellows and I got 
a lot of strength and courage to help me 
keep on struggling for a better manhood 
and for God! 

"I attended the Mission services regu- 
larly and the Wednesday night Bible 
Class. My ultimate victory — although I 
fell down again miserably before I 
reached it — I lay to that six months' Bible 
study with Dr. Hallimond. When I got 
through the Bible meant something to me 
or rather a very small part of it did. 

"We began our study at a happy Chap- 
ter. I doubt if any other would have 'got' 
me the way that one did. Perhaps the 
Doctor had more of my kind among the 
twenty-five. At any rate he chose well, 
for all of us, without exception, developed 
splendidly in our new life. We started 



172 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

and finished one chapter in those six 
months — the 13th Chapter of First Corin- 
thians. Its undreamed of treasures were 
food to my starved soul. As the meaning 
of it — of love — dawned slowly on my 
mind I could see the beautiful way it had 
been applied to me and I realised at last 
that religion did have a c kick' in it and 
that the brand I'd run up against, down 
there on the Bowery, was the real stuff. 
I understood then why they fed fellows 
and got them work as well as talked to 
them about God and his love. It was a 
different sort of brotherly love than I'd 
heard about in prisons and reform schools. 
"Love — Brotherly Love — The love of 
God — His love for us — all these things 
became real to me then. I wanted to be 
on God's side — but only for Jane! I 
hadn't yet caught the true meaning. 
What I wanted God for was because of 
Jane. 



I SUFFER AS NEVER BEFORE 173 

"I thought she needed it in me. I 
didn't dream I needed it first. I didn't 
know then that I couldn't go safely — keep 
right until I got God for myself. But I 
learned that like I learned all I know by 
personal experience, the best teacher in 
the world. 

"From my dollar a week job in the 
Memorial House they transferred me to a 
job at a dollar and fifty cents a week in 
the industrial department at the Mission 
itself. I ate and slept there. My duties 
consisted of going out on call to collect 
old chairs that were to be re-caned and 
furniture that needed re-upholstering or 
repairing. This work was done in the 
Mission by men who were going through 
the same process I was going through. 
When the work was completed I delivered 
it and collected the money. They trusted 
me implicitly, of course, although they 
knew my past just as you do. I turned in 



174 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

every cent I collected and sometimes I 
carried a goodly amount of money. I 
did it all without an error and without 
even a single thought of being dishonest. 
You know what love and responsibility 
will do. Love is the most powerful force 
in the world and there is no power on 
earth can stop it once it gets into a fel- 
low's skin. That's Mr. Osborne's belief 
and the results he's had at Auburn and 
Sing Sing are only natural and common- 
place. He's awakening in the hearts of 
those men something they didn't know 
they possessed. 

"As I called each week on Jane I could 
see plainly she was getting no better, in 
fact I saw she was failing. How my heart 
ached! And as I noticed this change for 
the worse in her she noticed the change 
for the better in me. Frequently she said 
to me, the tears streaming down her 
cheeks, 'John's a good man now!' 



I SUFFER AS NEVER BEFORE 175 

"While my salary had been a dollar a 
week I'd given her half of it, but now that 
I earned $1.50 I could spare her a dollar, 
which she got regularly. Those were 
proud and happy days for both of us! 
Each day that passed gave me greater 
confidence in my strength and my ability 
to beat the things that for years had 
beaten me. 

"The month of May rolled round as I 
began to get impatient at the progress I 
was making. I wasn't earning enough. 
I wanted a home where I could take Jane. 
One dollar and a half wouldn't give it to 
me. And so I looked around for new em- 
ployment. All my friends advised me to 
remain at or near the Mission, to stay 
where its influence could help me until I 
was stronger in my new life. 

"But no, I must have more money. I 
must have a home for my failing wife. I 



176 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

feared she would die. I dreaded to think 
of that before I had in a small way made 
up to her for all those years of agony and 
heartache. 



CHAPTER XXII 

IN WHICH IS HELL 

"And so with the best and truest inten- 
tions in the world, with the positive belief 
that I was safe, I left the Mission. Many 
a man with position, ability and education 
makes moves as disastrous as this one of 
mine. But in all such cases they are 
thought of merely as 'mistaken judg- 
ment.' In my case and in cases of others 
of my kind the verdict is 'wilful backslid- 
ing.' 

"I got a job in the Oceanic Hotel at 
Coney Island, about the worst place in the 
whole world for me to go. I see it now 
and I saw it then, just after it was too 
late. About all I saw was drink. About 

177 



178 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

all I heard was 'the ponies/ I was a por- 
ter and general utility man. The pay was 
a dollar and a half a day and my bed. 
The season was just starting. The sport- 
ing, drinking and gambling part of the 
public had been shut in the city all winter. 
They hailed the opening of the beaches 
and the tracks with delight. For a month 
I stood my ground solidly. I felt justi- 
fied in the move I'd made. Jane was de- 
lighted at my will power and strength. I 
didn't waver a bit — had not the slightest 
desire for drink or poolroom. Things went 
smoothly and well. If I had been aware 
of any temptation I'd 'a' beat it away. I 
feel sure of this as I look back at it now. 

"But things couldn't go like that long. 
The environment was wrong and the good 
influence of the Mission and the men there 
was lacking. I was relying on my own 
strength and I hadn't enough to hold me. 

"I fell; that's all. I didn't do it delib- 



IN WHICH IS HELL 179 

erately. The first thing I knew I'd been 
in Paddy Shea's poolroom — placed a bet 
— lost — and had a drink. The old life 
had me. It was all over. My system was 
on fire and I couldn't put it out. I went 
to the bottom — way, way down into the 
slime and filth of sin and shame. While 
it lasted I gloried in it. That must have 
been so else I'd never gone so far. 

"You know what Jane suffered and 
what it cost her. 

"I stole all she had saved of the money 
I'd sent her. I hocked her insurance 
papers and all else she had on which 
'Uncle' would advance anything. It all 
went — every single pawnable thing! I'd 
go up there drunk, with a flask in my 
pocket and go to bed where I'd stay till 
the flask was empty. 

"I'd been fired from my job at the 
Oceanic and had gotten one as a dish- 
washer at the English Kitchen on the 



180 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

Brighton Pike at a dollar a day. Each 
night I drew fifty cents against my wage. 
That gave me a quarter for my bed and a 
quarter for booze. 

"Day after day this went on and Au- 
gust came around. It was about the 
tenth of the month, I think, that I went 
up to see Jane. I was beastly drunk and 
wild from the effects of an unusually hard 
debauch. I staggered up the street and 
into the house. I went up to her room. 
There she lay! 

"Her teeth were chattering. Her arms 
lay helpless at her sides. She didn't know 
me, She was trying to speak but couldn't. 
The neighbours were about. All was ex- 
citement. For a wonder I came partially 
to my senses. I telephoned and finally an 
ambulance came from Seney Hospital 
and the brave little woman was taken 
away desperately ill from a stroke. 

"As soon as she was gone the drunken 



IN WHICH IS HELL 181 

rage returned and I broke loose more vio- 
lently than ever before in my life. I ran- 
sacked the place, smashing things to bits. 
I found five dollars I'd missed before 
and stole that. As I was about to leave 
an insane impulse seized me and I lifted 
her trunk in my arms, hurled it through 
the door and down a flight of stairs. 

"Off I went to Coney Island and began 
all over again. In a few days I sobered 
up sufficiently to remember Jane and went 
up to the Hospital to see her. She was 
somewhat better — enough so that she 
could speak. She saw me coming through 
the ward. Throwing her arms about my 
neck, she cried in agony and despair: 

"'Oh, God, what will become of me 
now?' 

"That scene and that cry and the look 
on her face struck terror to my heart. At 
once I was dead sober — as sober as I am 
now. I was a thinking man again. Man 



182 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

enough to have swallowed the poison I 
couldn't swallow before, if it hadn't been 
for the woman in front of me ! And then 
my head swam. Perspiration stood out in 
beads on my forehead. My wife was go- 
ing to die! No! No! it couldn't be! It 
mustn't be! There must be something I 
could do. And then it flashed across my 
mind — The Mission! there I could get 
help! I'd ask them. I'd write Dr. Halli- 
mond. 

"All the way back to Coney Island I 
thought of what I'd done. I cried to God 
for wisdom, for help — for the life of my 
dear wife. For the first time I felt that 
I had offended God — that God cared what 
I did. That feeling was very strong in 
me as I sat down and wrote to Dr. Halli- 
mond. 

"In the letter I made a full, frank 
statement. I told him of the dastardly 
things I'd done. I asked him for help — 



IN WHICH IS HELL 183 

for something — anything for my wife. 
Tor God's sake do for her — save her 
life.' For myself I asked nothing save 
forgiveness. I did ask that — I asked him 
to pray for me. 

"For several days I awaited a reply 
from him. None came. What could have 
happened? Surely he was not throwing 
me over. No, I knew better. My anxiety 
was making me ill when a letter came 
postmarked Brooklyn. Who in Brooklyn 
would write me ? Hastily I tore open the 
envelope and read the signature. The let- 
ter came from one of the members of the 
Wednesday Night Bible Class and his 
wife — Mr. and Mrs. Putnam. So long 
as God gives me the power to remember, 
this sentence from that letter will stay 
with me: 'If you don't come up to our 
house, and that right away, we'll have to 
come down there to you.' 

"There indeed was Friendship and Love 



184 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

and Kindness. Dr. Hallimond, when my 
letter reached him, was laid up tempora- 
rily. At once he wrote to Mr. Putnam to 
get on the job and he hadn't lost a mo- 
ment in doing so. Instinctively I knew 
that whatever there was to do for Jane 
had already been done. My relief was 
overpowering. I went all to pieces. I 
couldn't answer that letter; it broke me 
up when I tried to. Then another one 
came much like the first and I went up to 
their home — up Flatbush way somewhere. 

"On bended knees we prayed long and 
earnestly. 

"When I reached Coney Island a great 
load had been lifted from my mind. With 
Mrs. Putnam on the job I knew how Jane 
would fare. And until the day Jane 
passed away Mrs. Putnam was the good 
angel. Countless kindnesses and loving 
attentions she showered on my wife and 
became closer to her than any woman 



IN WHICH IS HELL 185 

friend she ever had. Such is the power 
and love in the religion of Jesus Christ! 

"With a set jaw I returned to my dish- 
washing and behaved myself. I finished 
the season at it and I finished without 
once side-stepping in any way. Jane re- 
covered shortly, sufficiently to be moved 
to her brother's house and I again began 
sending her what money I could spare 
from my seven dollars a week. 

"For some time before the end of the 
season I had longed for the Mission and 
its good friends — for the influence it ex- 
erted, but I wanted to get on my feet 
without their aid. At the close of the 
Mardi Gras I was glad to get away from 
the Island. The call of the Mission was 
strong upon me and I wanted more 
money. Jane was stronger and I wanted 
her to have her own home. That desire 
was stronger than it ever had been be- 
fore. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

TOGETHER — AT LAST 

"Back in New York never to leave it 
again! Back at the Mission! Back 
among my Christian friends! Back at 
the Labour Bureau! My strength and 
hope and courage returned to me many 
fold and thoroughly did I realise what it 
had cost — my leaving there that spring. 

"Jobs didn't come in very fast and my 
money was almost gone when a wonder- 
ful thing happened. Wonderful because 
I was nearly broke and because I chanced 
to be around when it happened. 

"The firm for whom I first went to 
work — piling lumber — needed an extra 
man, and as before telephoned the Labour 
Bureau. 

186 



TOGETHER— AT LAST 187 

"'Had the Mission a man to send 
over?' 

" 'Yes, the same man they sent before. 
Would he do?' 

" 'Yes, he had done well. Send him 
over right away.' 

"And I went. They were busy and for 
about three weeks the work was steady. 
Nearly all my money went to Jane, of 
which she saved considerable. This time 
the work was a little more interesting and 
I became well liked by some of the men. 

"Each day I prayed for strength to 
stand for God and for regular employ- 
ment. And then came a day when the 
end of the work was in sight. I got talk- 
ing with Bill Quarterly about my need of 
steady work because of a sick wife, and he 
asked me why I didn't make a bid for a 
steady job there. I told him I didn't 
know why. 

" 'If you don't I'll do it for you,' was 



188 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

his reply, and he did. Then and there I 
was added to the regular payroll. 

"Without the slightest warning that it 
was at hand my greatest wish had come 
to pass. I couldn't believe it. It didn't 
seem real. I didn't deserve it. Ten dol- 
lars a week — five hundred and twenty 
dollars a year — with overtime amounting 
to possibly seventy-five dollars more. 
And all with a reliable house doing a big, 
yearly business. 

"A home at last! 

"I didn't deserve it but Jane did and 
she would have it! And then — then — 
would I stick? With God's help I would. 
I knew that. At night I prayed to Him 
as I'd never prayed before that I might 
remain steadfast and true to Him. If I 
did that I'd remain steadfast and true to 
her. I had it right this time. I wanted 
to aid my wife through God. 

"And God answered my prayer. He 



TOGETHER— AT LAST 189 

has kept me safe ever since. He left Jane 
with me for a little longer. He let me 
make up to her one hundred millionth 
part of what I owed her. He let me see 
her supremely happy. He let me help 
her make others happy. Yes, God is 
good! 

"I told Dr. Hallimond about my good 
fortune — about answered prayer. I told 
him what I wanted to do, and the look 
that came into his kindly face told me to 
'Go ahead.' And ahead I went. I took a 
dingy little room in the basement of a 
rooming house at 210 West 14th St., quite 
near my work. 

"And then we had our honeymoon! 
My wife, myself and God! 

"There have been many honeymoons in 
this old world of ours, but there never 
was a happier one than that. The void 
that for seventeen years had filled her 
heart with anguish and sorrow disap- 



190 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

peared. God is good! Yes, indeed, He 
is ! He brought us together but He spared 
each of us the knowledge that her illness 
was incurable, and that slowly but surely 
she must fail until it was time for her to 
go. He let our remaining nineteen 
months together be months of fuller joys 
than most men know. I can never thank 
Him enough for His goodness and mercy 
to me. 

"The one room we called home I fur- 
nished with odds and ends from here and 
there and we began our housekeeping. 
At first Jane was well enough to walk the 
necessary three or four blocks to do the 
marketing. She was a careful buyer, for 
well had she learned the value of a dollar. 
In her hands my ten dollars went twice as 
far as I could have made them go. Our 
industrial insurance was always paid well 
in advance ! The work at the factory went 



TOGETHER— AT LAST 191 

smoothly along and our happiness was 
complete. 

"It was then immediately after our re- 
union that religion became most real to 
me. It became a living tangible thing, a 
force, a power that I could clothe myself 
with and make good use of each day I 
lived. My home, humble though it was, 
acted like a tonic on my tired, weary sys- 
tem. There was silver in my wife's hair 
and music in her laughter. I'd put the 
silver there and the music there. I 
couldn't take the silver away but I could 
prevent the musical laughter from ever 
going away. That was my job and an 
easier one no man ever had. 

" 'John, you're a good man now!' 

"Over and over again she said that as 
she sat at her mending while I read. 

"The Mission by now entranced me like 
the race tracks had done such a short while 



192 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

before. I became an assistant leader and 
then a leader. 

"I stood on the platform and told my 
story to the crowd of men in front of me 
firm in the knowledge that somewhere in 
that crowd was a man I could touch like 
I'd been touched — firm in the belief that 
each time I told of the power of the re- 
ligion of Jesus Christ I strengthened my 
own faith and foundation and strength- 
ened the faith of each man who heard me. 

"As time went on and I began to meet 
more right thinking people I became con- 
vinced that the reason men fall away from 
God is because they stop thinking. And 
so I planned what I had to say along lines 
calculated to make men see in themselves 
something I had formerly possessed. 
After a while I began to hear little things 
and see little things that made me feel 
that I too was spreading the story of love 
— of hope — that Jesus told — that I was 



TOGETHER— AT LAST 193 

helping others to something better. It 
made me wonderfully happy and gave me 
more courage and faith and strength. I 
went among the fellows in the meetings 
and learned to know them personally. 
And then after I'd go home Jane and I 
would talk over the men I'd met and 
wanted to help. Thus it was that God 
became so real to me. I saw Him at work 
and I worked with Him. I knew what 
He'd done for me. I could see it. My 
wife could see it. My friends could see 
it. It was real. My home and my new 
self were powerful testimonies to His 
realness. No argument could get away 
from those things. And I knew, too, that 
nowhere in the world could a man be 
found with a more unpromising outlook 
for success than I had had. 

"The wonderfully beautiful part of life 
in that little basement room of ours were 
the Christian friends I'd made at the Mis- 



194 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

sion. They all knew my story and they 
came regularly and gladly with delicacies 
and good cheer for Jane. 

"There were rough times, too, when 
we'd close for a day or two at the factory. 
There were other times when calls on the 
cash were heavy for medicine. There 
were times when men we were interested 
in needed money more than we did. Many 
times there wasn't all we'd liked to have 
had, but always there was something else 
that all the money in the world wouldn't 
buy — the 'peace that passeth all under- 
standing' and the knowledge that God is 
all-powerful. 

"But like all happy times an end had 
to come. Jane grew more feeble. She 
could do less and less of the housework. 
This I did at night. Finally she could 
do no more than crawl about from chair 
to chair and watch longingly between the 



TOGETHER— AT LAST 195 

gratings in our only window for my re- 
turn. 

"I left home early after getting break- 
fast and washing the dishes and didn't re- 
turn till twelve-thirty for lunch. One day 
on coming home the shutters were closed 
and I was startled. And then inside, 
downstairs, our door was locked from 
within. In a second I'd walked right 
through it — frame and all. 

"There on the floor in a great, wide 
pool of her own blood lay Jane with a 
two-inch hole in her skull from falling in 
a faint. And we sent her away to a hos- 
pital with a second stroke. 

"More feeble than ever, she returned! 
Gracious and happy and contented she 
was! Not once had she ever scolded me 
or chided me or crossed me in any way. 
And here she was dying and I was help- 
less to save her. All I could do was to 
care for her in my primitive way. My 



196 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

friends would have sent her to a private 
room in a hospital, but she wouldn't leave 
her home or her John! They would have, 
sent in a nurse, but she would allow no 
one to care for her but 'John.' Even 
after she was unable to recognise them 
they came and came and came — these 
friends of ours — these friends so full of 
brotherly love. 

On the advice of at least three doctors 
I kept her alive on whiskey for the last 
few months. My wife was dying under 
my very eyes. I'd had to give up the 
little home where we'd lived and loved. I 
was powerless to help her. But I bought 
her whiskey and I fed her whiskey for 
weeks and weeks and weeks and not a 
drop of it ever touched my lips. Oh, God 
is good! Think what He saved that 
woman from as she lay there dying! God 
is good ! 

At last she required more care than I 



TOGETHER— AT LAST 197 

could give her — you know the rest — how 
we sent her to Bellevue and how she died. 
You were there! 



John Goode's huge frame shook convul- 
sively while unchecked tears rolled down 
his cheeks. They were tears of sadness 
and shame, of joy and victory all in one. 
The floodgates of an intense nature had 
broken open. Such tears are difficult to 
check even when there is a will, but there 
was no will now to check them. There 
are times when naught save tears will 
bring relief, and this was such a time. 

Instinctively my mind went back to that 
clear, cold October day when Jane lay so 
sick in Bellevue Hospital! 

Was it the guiding hand of Providence 
that had forced this man and his desper- 
ately sick wife into my mind as I worked 
at my desk that day? Was it the guiding 
hand of Providence that had kept me un- 



198 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

easy all day until at half -past four I could 
stand it no longer? I put on my hat and 
walked over to the factory where he 
worked and together we went around the 
corner to their dingy basement room 
where they had been so wondrously 
happy for over nineteen months. We 
went to that room which had been a re- 
treat from storm and temptation for so 
many, many human derelicts — to that 
room which had shared its all with any 
who asked by day or by night, to that 
room which had seen so much of physical 
pain — to that room which was to be his 
home no longer! 

Graciously and hospitably he prepared 
a frugal meal. The dishes we left un- 
washed. We hurried to the street. 

Vividly I remember, remember as 
though it were but yesterday, how from a 
flower vender at Sixth Avenue and Four- 
teenth Street he purchased ten cents worth 



TOGETHER— AT LAST 199 

of perfumed sprayed roses for the frail, 
sick little wife lying in her bed of pain in 
that ward at Bellevue. 

And again we had hurried on. Neither 
of us spoke. 

We entered the ward. Her bed was 
empty and had been freshly made up. 
My heart almost stopped. He did not 
seem to realise the significance of that 
empty bed. 

A nurse tiptoed up and beckoned us to 
follow. Jane had failed rapidly late that 
afternoon and they had telegraphed for 
him to come at once. But the telegram 
had miscarried. 

Beyond the shadow of a doubt it had 
been an act of Providence that had com- 
pelled me to act, as that telegram failed to 
reach him. 

They had moved the almost worn out 
little frame to a private room. The bed 
lay close to a partly opened window. 



200 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

Preceded by the nurse, we entered at pre- 
cisely the moment that nature gave way 
and the poor, tired, worn out little heart 
ceased its beating forever. 

Those flowers — he could not hand them 
to her now — he laid gently on her breast. 

What a night that was ! How brave he 
had been! How manly — how totally un- 
like the man he formerly had been — how 
much like the man so many of us ought 
to be. 

We walked the streets, going nowhere, 
but always walking, walking, walking till 
long after daylight. It was bitter cold, 
but he felt it not. He was fighting — 
fighting the biggest battle of his life. 
Fighting to resist the old call — the call of 
drink, of excitement, of anything to 
deaden the pain at his heart. 

And he won his fight! 

His tears ceased and our eyes met. 
We read each other's thoughts. Why 



TOGETHER AT LAST 201 

shouldn't we? Fate had served me as she 
had him. He had been to me under simi- 
lar circumstances what I had been to him. 
Together each time we had passed through 
two never, never-to-be-forgotten events. 



"You know how we took her little body 
to the Mission that the men there might 
see the lesson in her life — you know the 
memories that service awakened in the 
hearts of many men long since separated 
from their dear ones as I had been. God 
alone knows how much good that service 
did. 

"You remember how we cleared the 
room out, destroyed what I didn't want 
and gave the rest away? It was all over 
then. And when the excitement had 
passed off and the old, old wanderlust 
again crept into my being I packed up my 
belongings, for I was afraid. 

"With my bundle in my hand, and with 



202 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

the fear in my heart that I'd fall, I went 
back where my real, true self came from — 
I went back to live again at the Bowery 
Mission." 



EPILOGUE 

John Goode is by no means an imag- 
inary person. The foregoing story is not, 
as some might suppose, either romance or 
fiction. The graphic recital of this man's 
uplifting from the lowest depths of de- 
pravity to the pure, clean heights of a 
thoroughly regenerated manhood, is not 
open even to the charge of exaggeration. 
Speaking under the mighty stress of an 
exaltation and rapture unknown and un- 
knowable except to those who have been 
delivered from the thrall of gross ma- 
terialism, and have become "new creatures 
in Christ Jesus," extreme language, with 
an occasional trip across the border into 
the purely imaginary, might almost have 
been pardonable. 

203 



204 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

But nothing but hard, cold, and some- 
times cruel fact has fallen from this man's 
lips. 

The temptation to the author, Mr. 
Scandlin, must also have been a very great 
one. The friendship between these two 
men has been one of the most pathetic 
things I have ever known. Utterly dis- 
similar in disposition, training, and tem- 
perament, the one a young business man, 
the other a hardened ex-convict, they were 
brought together in the Bowery Mission, 
learned together at the feet of the Great 
Teacher the same lesson of Ltove, and 
formed for each other an affection and 
respect never surpassed since the days of 
David and Jonathan. 

Notwithstanding this, Mr. Scandlin 
has conducted the recital of this touching 
story without permitting a hair's-breadth 
deviation from the line of absolute fact. 

The story could very well be extended, 



EPILOGUE 205 

and something said of John Goode's life 
of abundant usefulness during the last 
few years. He is one of our most active 
workers, the leader of our Wednesday 
night meetings, and the assistant leader of 
the Sunday evening meetings. He is never 
absent from his post. He puts an amaz- 
ing amount of enthusiasm into everything 
he says and does, in connection with the 
meetings. When he speaks, he never re- 
mains on the platform, but walks down 
into the midst of the crowd, where he has 
his audience at close grips. His talks and 
testimonies are always delivered with tre- 
mendous force, and many a brand has he 
plucked from the burning. 

His activities, however, are not confined 
to the meetings. If there is any poor out- 
cast, who has fallen so often that even the 
warm-hearted workers in our meetings 
have lost faith in him, it is John Goode 
that goes after him. If the news comes to 



206 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

the Mission that some man has fallen by 
the way, been overcome with temptation, 
and is in the backroom of some saloon, or 
has been taken to the Tombs prison, or 
the alcoholic ward of Bellevue Hospital, 
it is John Goode that always flies to the 
rescue. His own deliverance has been so 
wonderful, and his faith in God and man, 
therefore, so great that he despairs of no 
one. He is a man of great mental ability, 
he has a passionate love of reading works 
of philosophy, poetry, and artistic litera- 
ture. He has two favourites amongst the 
preachers of New York City, whom he 
never fails to hear when he has the chance, 
Dr. Jowett and Dr. Hugh Black. Read- 
ers of this little story, bearing in mind his 
early training, and his progress through 
the dark by-ways of vice and crime, may 
be surprised to know that the two princi- 
pal features of his character are, his love 



EPILOGUE 207 

of the beautiful and his love of little chil- 
dren. 

There, perhaps, never was such a serv- 
ice in the Bowery Mission as the Memorial 
Service to his wife. He insisted upon 
having her body brought and placed in 
the middle aisle of our auditorium, and 
as he stood there, his huge frame shaking 
with emotion, his hand resting lovingly 
upon the casket, he pleaded with the men, 
especially those separated from their 
wives and children, to accept the same 
wonderful salvation that had come to him. 
I have been many years in this work 
amongst the lowly of the Bowery, and 
have witnessed many pathetic scenes, but 
amongst the most impressive are those of 
that faithful wife in her humble home in 
her later days, rejoicing over the answer 
to her prayers, and the transformation of 
her husband. Over and over again, with a 
smile of ineffable beauty resting upon her 



208 THE WICKED JOHN GOODE 

poor, worn features, would she repeat the 
words, "John is such a good man." 

We are praying that John Goode's life 
may be spared to us for many years to 
come, for a stouter, braver life has never 
breasted the waves in behalf of his fellow- 
men, 

J. G. Hallimond, 

Superintendent of the 

Bowery Mission. 



